The Honest Courtesan

I’ve been seeing a working girl I really like, and I think she likes me too, at least enough that she felt comfortable scheduling a day-long sightseeing trip with me in a few weeks.  But I have my suspicions that she may not be doing this work out of her free will (i.e., she may be trafficked or otherwise forced into this).  She works from 10 am until midnight 6 days a week, and is certainly not keeping the entire donation; she has both a boss and an operator who takes the appointments.  She’s Asian and speaks virtually no English, and has been working only for a few weeks.  She has very few possessions and sleeps in the same apartment where she works, and another girl works from a second bedroom while the operator works in the living room.  I’d really like to help this girl because I think she’s too sweet to be in whatever situation she’s in.  Could you give me some advice on how to approach the subject and how I could help her?

In “A False Dichotomy” (see The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I), I pointed out that only the Paris Hiltons of the world freely choose to work; the rest of us have to do something, and our choices are limited by our abilities, temperament and  opportunities.  If any of those factors are unusually narrow, choices can be very constrained indeed; furthermore, a person may elect to temporarily perform a job he would not otherwise choose because it opens a door to greater opportunities later.  This last is especially true for immigrants from poor countries; lack of education, language barriers and the high cost of migration present formidable obstacles to employment, so upon first arriving in a country a person might indeed take a job he doesn’t really care to do as a stepping-stone toward something better.  For men, that’s often agricultural or other manual labor; for women it’s often domestic or sex work.

Could your lady friend have been coerced in some way?  Anything’s possible, but nothing you’ve written points to that.  You seem to think her hours are long, but I worked the same number per week and so do lots of people in sales jobs.  You say she isn’t keeping her entire fee, but I’m sure you expect the operator to be paid and her employer to make a profit; I daresay you don’t keep all the money that passes through your hands at work, either, but that doesn’t mean you’re “trafficked”.  And you say she has few possessions, but since she speaks virtually no English and has only been working a few weeks, it’s likely she hasn’t been in the country much longer than that, and would therefore have only those things she could afford to transport…which probably wasn’t much.

She may have incurred a debt to migrate; she may even be paying a rate of interest you or I would consider usurious, or be subject to other unpleasant conditions…but I could say the same thing about medical interns.  None of that means she did not choose her situation as the best available one, nor that she regrets her choice.  As I pointed out in “Thought Experiment” (also in The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I), you have to give her the same respect as you would give anyone else; if you wouldn’t interfere in the affairs of a waitress, clerk or barber, you shouldn’t do it to a whore, either.  You’ve scheduled a day-long trip with her, and since you like her you’ll undoubtedly continue to visit her after that; if she is genuinely in trouble and sincerely wants your help, she will eventually find a way to ask you for it.  But if she doesn’t, you have to allow her the dignity of her own choice, even if you don’t like that choice.

I’m an old-fashioned mature kind of guy who’s open to a relationship in whatever form it may take – platonic, dating, romance, long-term relationships, friends with benefits, no strings attached, swingers, etc. – however, I’m not entirely sure where to find a woman.  I have tried Craigslist, Facebook and online dating sites, and I try to be honest and straightforward with my descriptions and what I’m looking for, but it seems that no one wants to give me a chance.  I’m 29 years old, husky but becoming more health conscious, and self-employed; I enjoy going out to the park, movies, museums, jazz clubs, riding my bike and stimulating conversation.  My friends tell me I am articulate, generous and mannerly, I believe in treating others as I would want to be treated, and I believe EVERY woman is beautiful.  I’m not looking for pity or an easy ride, I just want to find someone who’s willing to look past the love handles and see me for the guy I really am.

The most important single factor for attracting women is confidence.  You know how people say animals can smell fear?  Well, women can smell lack of confidence.  If a guy is unsure of himself, most women won’t give him a tumble even if he looks like a movie star.  So it’s vital you build up your confidence and never let women see you sweat (metaphorically speaking).  You’re 29 years old, which is good; the worst part of your life for attracting women is already over.  See, more boys are born than girls, but males die at a higher rate per year so by 30 the numbers are basically even; every year after that the ratio of men to women gets ever-smaller.  In other words, as you age your company becomes proportionately more valuable; time is on your side.  My advice is to concentrate on your work and try not to stress about women; keep riding your bike, going to museums and all the other stuff you do, and be friendly to the women you meet but don’t pursue them or let them see you as emotionally needy.  I’m not telling you to play hard to get; it must be real, not a game (and certainly not Game).  If you find yourself needing sex, hire an escort; this will take the edge off and allow you to authentically project coolness.  If a woman seems genuinely interested and you think she’s unattached, ask her out and don’t let it get to you if she says no; maybe she really does have to help her friend move that night.  Just smile and say something like “maybe another time, then” and continue the previous conversation as if it really doesn’t bother you that she said “no”.  Even if you never go out with that particular woman, doing this will help you to get used to rejections so they don’t get you down and destroy your confidence, and I’m willing to bet within a relatively short time you’ll get a lot fewer rejections.

I’m thinking about calling an escort for the first time; do they take young guys seriously?  Or would I be treated differently from older men?

Some ladies have a lower age limit of 30 or even 35, but if one does it’ll be marked clearly on her website.  If a young man wants to see an escort, there are some very simple steps he can take to ensure she takes him seriously:

• Read her website carefully and approach her exactly as she says she wants to be approached.  If you don’t have references, you need to find a lady who specifically advertises as “newbie friendly” or else you’re just wasting her time and yours.
• Be clear, honest and polite about being young, and understand that this is a liability for you rather than an asset; one of the most asinine and annoying things a would-be client can say is something like “I’m young and good looking, so you’ll enjoy it” or “Do I get a discount because I’m young and fit?”
• Don’t ask prying or lurid questions, and don’t try to get dirty talk for free; be polite and respectful.
• Be patient if she expects you to jump through some hoops; give her whatever screening info she wants.
• Read my “Advice for Clients” essay in The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I and follow it.
• If she won’t see you, tell her you understand, thank her for her time & try another lady.
• If she does agree to see you, make sure you’re on your best behavior and tip her extra; the next time you want to see someone you’ll be able to give the first lady’s name as a reference, and she will speak well of you.
• Treat all the first few escorts you see this way, and I promise you won’t have any trouble after that as long as you respect the wishes of those who have a posted lower age limit.  If you try to approach one of the ladies who do, she will take your ignoring her boundary as a sign that you’re impolite & disrespectful, and you still won’t get in to see her.

Good luck!

Maggie, have you written an article about why sex workers prefer older clients? You’ve mentioned this several times but I don’t recall you ever detailing why this is.

I don’t know that I’ve ever detailed it, either; in fact, I’m pretty sure I haven’t, because it’s such a given in our world that it may never have occurred to me that it actually needed detailing.  Obviously I was incorrect in that assumption!

I think there are four basic reasons why sex workers prefer older clients; two of them are purely pragmatic, one is related to professional satisfaction and the last is merely an amplification of a typical female preference.  Let’s take that last one first:  I don’t think anyone will disagree that most women tend to prefer men who are older than they are.  For most women it’s just a few years, but others prefer a larger gap and some tend toward a very noticeable disparity.  Yes, I recognize that there are exceptions to that rule, and y’all can argue whether the reason is nature or nurture if y’all want to (though I will most certainly not be participating).  But in general, I think most people will agree that at least part of the reason is that men mature more slowly than women, and (sorry, guys) never quite catch up.  So if a woman wants a sex partner of a comparable level of maturity, she’s generally going to have to select someone at least a few years older.  Since whores have to deal with a lot more men than the average amateur, we also have to put up with a lot more irritating male behavior than she does; since older men are more mature, they are much less likely to act like annoying boys than young men are wont to do.  And that makes our jobs easier, less stressful and much more pleasant.

Another thing about older men which makes them easier to deal with is that maturity tends to make a man appreciate quality over quantity.  Older men generally prefer better to more; in other words, the experience a sex worker gives him – her conversation and/or service, the atmosphere she creates, the subtle things she does that make her different from all other women – tends to become much more important than how many positions she is willing to try in one session or how many times she can bring him to climax.  On the one hand, that makes her job physically easier; having sex (or conducting a BDSM scene, or giving a sensual massage or whatever) can be both physically strenuous and emotionally draining, and that is multiplied when one’s partner is very energetic and demanding.  Consider that a sex worker may have to perform anywhere from several times per week to several times per day depending upon the kind of work and her price structure, and I think you’ll understand why clients who want to spend more time talking or cuddling than they do expecting her to turn handstands are so welcome.

But there’s another factor involved here as well:  sex workers whose professional model relies upon creating a holistic experience (such as courtesans, dominatrices, GFE escorts, tanrikas and many others) often spend considerable time, energy and effort on working out the minutiae of that experience, and it’s incredibly gratifying for that effort to be recognized and appreciated.  Imagine how a chef might feel if he were to see some hungry young athlete dump ketchup all over his lovingly-presented cuisine, wolf it down without pausing, belch loudly and then complain that the portion wasn’t big enough, and you might be able to grasp the reaction of an escort whose client does something very similar.  Mature men are much more likely to get it, and I don’t just mean appreciating the skill and savoring the experience; there’s a far greater chance that an older man will understand that sex workers are professional entertainers (see “Quicker Than the Eye”) who deserve to be paid well for our mastery of our ancient and venerable art.  Young men are far more likely than mature ones to haggle, try to fuck for every minute of a session or even willfully misunderstand the nature of the transaction (“I’m young and good-looking, do I get a discount?”); older men are much more likely to tip, book longer sessions and honor the economic basis of the transaction rather than merely tolerating it.

That last, of course, is certainly due at least in part to the fact that as a rule, older men are more financially healthy than younger ones; they can afford to be more  generous and don’t need to squeeze every last Jackson until it bleeds.  And that brings us to the other pragmatic reason most sex workers prefer older clients:  in general, they have more money.  They don’t haggle, are less likely to short the fee, book more often and for longer sessions, tip better, bring more generous gifts and can often be counted on to come through in financial emergencies.  And even if all other factors were equal, that one would heavily tip the scales to age.

Recently I clicked on a link which I thought would lead me to an article about human sexuality, but when it opened my eyes were bombarded with very explicit pornographic images which I was not prepared for, was not desirous of seeing, and did not seek out intentionally.  What do you see as a fair, ethical and legal way to stop this?  I think an opt-in option for internet consumers who want to access porn is a good idea…for those of who do not opt-in, then those images will be nowhere on our screens.  That is my idea. I’d like to hear yours.

The world is not a perfect place; it never has been, and it never will be.  Scientists will point to entropy, and metaphysicians will tell you that there wouldn’t be much point in a perfect world because it would have to be wholly static, frozen in its perfection.  Obviously everyone knows this, and yet perfectly reasonable people will waste incredible amounts of time and energy arguing about what the “feminist Utopia” or the “libertarian Utopia” or the “progressive Utopia” or whatever would be like.  Now, if this were just one of those intellectual games like, “If we were all cheeses, what kind of cheese would you be?” that would be just fine and dandy, but I’m afraid it isn’t; for example, many women who should have more sense will go on and on about how women “shouldn’t” have to worry about being raped…yet they don’t say a word about how men “shouldn’t” have to worry about being robbed, or poor people “shouldn’t” have to worry about paying the bills, or people of any kind “shouldn’t” have to consider the possibility of being blown to Kingdom Come by some fanatic trying to draw attention to his cause.  The fact of the matter is that there are bad people in the world, and desperate people, and unbalanced people, and any of them might potentially doom you (or at least hurt you very badly) every time you step outside of your house.

Now, the chances of being attacked on any given day aren’t all that high, and in fact they’re getting lower all the time; furthermore, there are measures one can take to protect oneself which are vastly more effective than whining “but I shouldn’t have to defend myself!” or delegating the task to some paternalistic government which will almost certainly fail to do its job because the police can’t be everywhere at once.  Oh, it’s certainly possible to make the police more effective simply by increasing their number and powers; however, that automatically restricts freedom at the same time, as Americans are discovering to their chagrin.  The only way to ensure you don’t get attacked when you step outside your house is, unsurprisingly, not to step outside of your house…but that makes for a pretty boring existence, a rough approximation of that static Utopia I mentioned above.  An infant in a playpen guarded by parents and a nanny 24 hours a day is about as safe as any human can be, but he can’t explore much of the world.  And an insect sealed in amber is so well-protected it can exist changelessly for tens of millions of years…dead, of course, but one can’t have everything.

The internet is like a world of its own, with a nearly-infinite number of places to explore.  And just like the real world, some of the people there aren’t very nice and some of the things one might find are unpleasant.  Every time I drive into town I risk seeing dead animals on the highway or bumping into folks with extremely poor hygiene; the internet has its equivalents of these things, too.  And just as in real life, the only sure way to be safe from attack or offense is to stay indoors, i.e. off of the internet.  Yes, it’s possible to delegate the task to some paternalistic government which will almost certainly fail to do its job because the censors can’t stop everything; it’s also possible to make the filters more effective simply by increasing their number and powers, but again, that automatically restricts freedom at the same time.  See, the problem is that computers, like cops, are incredibly stupid and literal-minded:  both of them will always fail to do a lot of what they are intended to do, while simultaneously doing a lot of bad things they were not supposed to.  And there is absolutely no way to stop this (in either case) because, as I said at the beginning, the world is neither perfect nor perfectible.

The only “fair and ethical” solution is the same for both the virtual world and the real one:  every individual has to choose the balance of safety and freedom which is right for him, and refrain from trying to impose his choice upon others.  If some woman wants to live in a sanitized bubble where she’s protected from rape and everything else (except by the guards, of course), that’s her choice, but I prefer to interact with others freely without Big Brother watching.  If some man wants to shut himself off from physical human contact and restrict all of his interaction to the internet (where he cannot be physically harmed), bully for him; I prefer to risk getting sunburnt, stung or scarred.  And if you choose to install readily-available internet filtering software and allow it to make the decisions about what you’re allowed to see, be my guest; just don’t expect me to accept it on my computer, or to pay for your voluntary narrowing of your own experience.

I find it quite remarkable that you not only understand the changes that occur to a healthy male denied sex, but can also write about it so well, and acknowledge and accept it rather than using it to manipulate and control men.  Can you write a column for men, to help us understand women?  I would very much like a better understanding of how the female sex drive is so easily thwarted.  Most men can’t just turn off their sex drive, even when there are good, practical, and sometimes urgent reasons to do so.  Yet it seems that most women can simply cut theirs off at will, and resume it later when and where they choose.  How does this work?

In a way, I was very lucky to be a late bloomer; as I’ve said before I was quite plain in my early teens, and only started to blossom in my senior year (after I turned 16).  Of course, I didn’t know I was going to blossom, so I recognized when I was 13 that I would need to understand men in order to attract them, rather than simply relying upon my natural gifts as the prettier girls could.  I didn’t realize until much later that though I wasn’t much to look at, I had “a pronounced sexual aura, and coquettishness came naturally to me,” and that these characteristics more than outweighed my plainness in many young men’s estimation.  So I learned everything my cousin Jeff was willing to teach me about men, read everything I could get my hands on about male psychology and carefully observed the behavior of my male friends, brother, father, uncles, cousins and every other guy I interacted with; nor did I cease to learn once my looks caught up with the rest of my charms.

I’m afraid I have to disenchant you on one point, though:  I certainly do manipulate men, and always have since I first discovered I could about the age of 14.  However, I never do so in a harmful or malicious way; I’ve always had a strong sense of fairness (which, again, I have to thank Jeff for encouraging), and I determined while still in high school that any manipulation of men would be such that they would get something out of it, too, and would never regret having given me whatever it was that I wanted.  In other words I tried to make it so that if a guy realized what I had done later, his reaction would not be an angry “That bitch played me like a piano!” but rather “That clever little minx!  Well, she can push my buttons any time!”  When friends realized how well I could do this they started asking me for advice, and like you found my degree of understanding remarkable; one appreciative young friend even called me “the Jane Goodall of men”.

But just as Dame Jane could probably tell you a lot more about chimpanzees than about her own species, so I probably know more about male sexual behavior than that of my own sex.  It’s a matter of both necessity and applicability.  By “necessity” I mean that when interacting sexually with other women I can just go by instinct, but for men I need intellectual knowledge.  And by “applicability” I mean that whatever I learn about any given man tends to work for most other men, but what I know about my own sexuality (or that of any other individual woman) cannot necessarily be applied to most other women.  Female sexual psychology is generally much more complicated than male, so it’s a lot easier for a woman to learn to understand men than it is for a man to understand women, or even for a woman to understand other women!  A big part of the reason for this is that women tend to be sexually fluid; rather than being “target-specific” as men are, women tend to move around the sexual spectrum depending upon their environment, circumstances and experiences.  In other words, though most gay men really are “born that way,” that’s not necessarily true of women, who are much more likely to move between heterosexual and homosexual relationships over time as their conditions change.  So it’s much harder to say “women tend to be like this”, because as soon as you think you’ve got it pinned down, a woman’s sexuality may “morph” into something different.  This is why an open-minded woman can often be talked into swinging, BDSM, or some other “kink” that she may not really have been interested in to start with; it’s not necessarily that she has a deep psychological affinity for the activity, but rather that she loves the person who does the talking and as a result can “flow” in that direction unless the process is obstructed by guilt, sexual hang-ups, fear, busybody friends or the like.

This is, like a lot of sex, rooted in reproductive biology.  Sperm is cheap; men make about a hundred million of the little bastards every single day, while women produce one single egg per month.  In other words, each individual egg is worth over 3,000,000,000 times as much as each sperm.  Guys can afford to throw sperm around to all and sundry like the cheapest kind of Mardi Gras beads, but women have to be really careful about whom we bestow our eggs upon; it doesn’t take a genius to see how this shapes male and female behavior throughout the animal kingdom.  Furthermore, the biological cost increases exponentially if one of those eggs is fertilized; each pregnancy takes a dramatic toll on a woman’s entire body, while men actually feel better after sending sperm on their way!  Because of this, female placental mammals are even choosier and cock-blockier than our egg-laying cousins, and the human capacity for anticipating consequences magnifies that still more.  Biologically speaking, poor mating decisions have absolutely zero negative impact on a male; he can dump sperm in unhealthy females, in females of different species, in males of his own species or even on the ground and there will still be plenty more where that came from.  But for a female it’s the opposite; every mating choice may have huge (and in humans decades-long) consequences.  The existence of birth control is irrelevant:  I know it exists, and you know it exists, but our hindbrains don’t, and they carry on just as though every act of coitus could lead to pregnancy…which for men means the same in either case, but for women is quite different.

What it boils down to is this:  men typically want sex most of the time because more sex means more offspring, with absolutely no (biological) downside.  But because a woman can only get pregnant so many times, and only once a year at most, our sex-response failsafe mechanisms are on hair triggers compared to yours.  It’s not that women can cut off our sex drives at will, but rather that our brains and bodies will cut it off for many more reasons than yours will.  If anything about a potential sexual partner or situation fails any of dozens of tests our brains subject them to, an alarm is tripped, the plug is pulled and the whole system goes down to protect the woman from squandering vital resources on an unhealthy baby or dangerous, troublesome pregnancy.  This is also why older women often lose their sex drives; after menopause their systems are essentially sending back error codes, saying “you can’t get pregnant, so don’t waste energy doing this.”

I’ll leave you with an analogy.  Imagine how a woman might react if somebody walked up to her in public and slapped a scoop of ice cream into her hand; she’d probably be pretty upset.  It isn’t that she doesn’t like ice cream; it’s just that she doesn’t want a nasty scoop of cheap vanilla ice cream slapped into her previously-clean hand by some random stranger when she wasn’t even in the mood for dessert!  She wants her favorite flavor of her preferred brand at the right time, served neatly in a cone or dish, maybe with sprinkles, and preferably eaten with someone whose company she enjoys.  If any of those factors are wrong, her experience is lessened; and if more than a couple are wrong, she is much more likely to react with disgust than with pleasure.

When I met my girlfriend she told me that she is bisexual and had been only with girls for two years; at first it only bothered me a bit, but the more I think about it the more insecure I feel.  She says she’s only been with two girls, one for a night and the other for seven months; she insists that it was just a phase of her life.  But I still feel hurt so I hope you can help give me peace on this.

I’m not sure why you should be bothered, hurt or insecure about her bisexuality; would you be equally concerned if she claimed to be wholly heterosexual?  Trust is trust, and fidelity is fidelity; a bisexual girl isn’t any more likely to cheat on you than a strictly straight one would be, merely because she has a wider range of sexual partners.  Bisexuality isn’t a sign of wantonness or sluttishness; it’s just that women are far more sexually fluid than men are.  As I explained in “Ice Cream in the Hand” (page xx),

…rather than being “target-specific” as men are, women tend to move around the sexual spectrum depending upon their environment, circumstances and experiences.  In other words, though most gay men really are “born that way,” that’s not necessarily true of women, who are much more likely to move between heterosexual and homosexual relationships over time as their conditions change…This is why an open-minded woman can often be talked into swinging, BDSM, or some other “kink” that she may not really have been interested in to start with; it’s not necessarily that she has a deep psychological affinity for the activity, but rather that she loves the person who does the talking and as a result can “flow” in that direction unless the process is obstructed by guilt, sexual hang-ups, fear, busybody friends or the like.

In other words, women really can go through “phases”, so if she says dating a girl exclusively for seven months was a “phase”, that could very well be true.  A young lady whom I had a maternal relationship with went through an exclusively lesbian stage for several years, but stopped dating girls before she turned 21.  Her bisexuality hasn’t “gone away”; she’s still sexually attracted to women, but doesn’t get into dating relationships with them any more.  That doesn’t even mean she’ll never date another woman again, just not right now.  I’m bisexual as well, and while I was married I wasn’t any more tempted to cheat with chicks than I was with guys…which is to say, not at all.

There is one further point which you may not have thought of:  a bisexual girlfriend might – just might, mind you – be far more open to a ménage à trois  with another woman than a strictly hetero girlfriend might be.  Next time you feel bothered or insecure, contemplate that possibility and maybe you won’t find your lady’s predilections quite so troubling.

I’m a Christian who has only had sex with the woman I married, and we waited until our wedding night for that.  About 8 months ago my wife took the kids and moved out, then divorced me; her excuse was that she caught me looking at porn.  She bailed out of counseling, telling the counselor that it was all my fault.  At first I felt she was wrong, but then I found a couple of books on sex addiction and found myself on every page.  Now I’m attending a sex addiction program, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be clean.  Can you give me some advice?

My advice is simple, though I’m going to elaborate on it a bit:  You were correct when you thought your wife was being unreasonable, and you should work on accepting your sexuality rather than letting a bunch of profiteering prudes inflict a never-ending guilt trip on you.  As I and others have written many, many times (I especially recommend The Myth of Sex Addiction by my friend Dr. David Ley), the entire concept of “sex addiction” is bullshit; it’s just Christian morality dressed up in psychobabble.  Sex is a natural function, not an outside chemical you’re introducing into your body; it’s no more possible to be “addicted” to sex than it is to be “addicted” to breathing, eating or pissing.  Try not taking a crap for a few days and watch how your thoughts slowly become dominated by thoughts of pooping; after a while your concentration will probably deteriorate and you won’t be able to think about much else.  Yet when your sex drives go similarly unrelieved, you actually believe people who tell you that means you’re an “addict”?  This is nonsense.  Studies show that so-called “sex addicts” don’t have sex (or think about it, or watch porn, or masturbate, or whatever) any more than other people do; they just feel more guilt and anxiety about their normal sexual impulses, and those bad feelings are directly correlated with the degree to which they carry guilt-inducing moral & religious attitudes about sex.  Those who write “sex addiction” books, teach “sex addiction” courses and give “sex addiction therapy” are charlatans, con artists who are profiting from “treating” a condition that can never be cured because it doesn’t exist in the first place.  The only way to “cure” sexual impulses is by castration (chemical or surgical), and even that’s not 100% because a lot of sex derives from regions of the brain which are going to do their thing even if your testosterone level drops to nearly zero.  And of course, all humans crave touch and intimacy (see “Skin to Skin” in The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I) no matter what their sex-hormone levels; the only way to “cure” that is to die.

In your very long letter you didn’t mention when you started looking at more porn and thinking about sex more often, but I’m willing to bet it correlates nicely with a decrease in physical intimacy with your wife.  I get letters with depressing regularity from Christian men whose wives cut them off dry (see the next essay inthis volume) and then complain that said husbands pester them for sex or watch porn (see “Late Bloomer” in Ask Maggie, Volume II); this makes about as much sense as refusing to keep food in the house and then bitching because their husbands complain about being hungry or sneak out to McDonald’s.  For whatever reason, your wife wanted out of the marriage; porn provided her a convenient excuse that would satisfy her Christian family and allow her to push the blame off onto you.  The “sex addiction” industry is feeding on your guilt and will try to encourage your unhealthy sex-negativity so it can keep feeding; if you want to be cured, what you really need to do is stop believing the abusers who keep telling you that you’re sick.

You seem to be unsympathetic to female sexual dysfunction.  In more than one survey two-thirds of women have reported some form of sexual dysfunction; if I were a woman I’d be mad as hell about that, and yet you (like many women) seem to have very little to say about it.  Is it some kind of mental block?  How can any woman not notice that male sexual dysfunction receives much more serious attention even though it is relatively rare compared to female sexual dysfunction?

Who defines “dysfunction”?  Are the numbers you speak of women who state they’re unhappy with their sex lives, or is it women whose responses fall into some category arbitrarily circumscribed by those who designed the survey?  If it’s the former you have a valid point, but if the latter I must remind you of what happens when we let academics define people’s experiences instead of listening to people’s own opinions about them (see “The Rape Question” in The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I).  When “authorities” set the parameters of “dysfunction” without regard to the perception of those they declare dysfunctional, the inevitable result is stuff like homosexuality being defined as a mental illness, transgenderism being considered a kind of delusion,  and sex workers being classed as infantile victims who need to be “rescued” from our own decisions.  The belief that “authorities” have the sole right to determine which experiences and modes of behavior are “healthy” has led to what Thomas Szasz called the “therapeutic state”, in which normal behaviors are pathologized by quacks, hired guns and those whose professional ethics take a back seat to promoting an agenda.  Much of this involves uncommon or even rare disorders being misapplied to much larger groups, such as claims that sex workers commonly suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (see page xx), or that migrant workers who deny being passively “trafficked” do so because of Stockholm syndrome.  Even beyond that, imaginary “disorders” are created to describe normal human conduct which politicians find inconvenient or fanatics dislike; for example, the totally understandable resentment young people feel when they’re treated as “children” is now pathologized as “Oppositional Defiant Disorder”, and the normal male attraction to young women is both pathologized by many psychologists and wrongfully conflated with pedophilia in the public mind.

When it comes to female desire, it isn’t the state or some large social bloc which wants control; it is the medical industry, especially the pharmaceutical industry, which dreams happy dreams of a gold mine if female desire can be successfully (though often wrongfully) medicalized as male desire has been, and women can be convinced that the solution to normal or emotionally-driven losses of desire can (and should) be “cured” by popping a pill which the industry will oh-so-helpfully provide.  A great deal of what is labeled “sexual dysfunction” in women has nothing to do with either body chemistry or socialization; many women who are perfectly functional under certain conditions or at certain times are not so in other circumstances, and it’s counterproductive and absurd to seek solutions with drugs, testosterone patches or psychotherapy when the problem may actually be something as simple as exhaustion, stress or poor choice of sex partners.  But even setting those concerns aside, it’s spectacularly useless to define female sexual function in terms of male (which is how a great deal of it is defined nowadays); because it’s normal for men to feel randy all the time, the assumption is that if women don’t it’s “dysfunction”.  Poppycock.  I rarely feel anything like what men think of as normal lust (see page xx), and I think that’s great; if I felt anything like the kind of near-constant desire men feel, I’d ask my gynecologist if there was anything we could do about it without ruining my looks.

If you want me (and a lot of other women) to get all “sympathetic” to the concept of “female dysfunction”, you’re going to need to do two things:  1) Define it in a way that reflects actual female experience instead of some pie-in-the-sky bullshit that would only benefit men (i.e. women as horny as men so y’all could get it for free much more often than you do); and 2) Do a lot better job of explaining why conforming to some one-size-fits-all textbook notion of “healthy” or “proper” sexual function is better than just being ourselves.  You say, “if I were a woman I’d be mad as hell about that”; no, you wouldn’t, because if you were a woman you would be a woman, not just a dude with a female body.  And as you yourself point out in the very next clause, most women don’t think it’s a big deal: men think it is, most especially men who stand to profit from convincing women that there’s something wrong with them that a less stressful life, more sexual knowledge and better communication with their partners couldn’t cure.

Why on earth would anybody pay for sex instead of going to a bar/club & getting it that way for a lot less?  What’s so special about these “high-end” services?

Getting sex from random amateurs is fine if you’re a single, socially adept vanilla with plenty of free time, no unusual or embarrassing needs, and no need for discretion who doesn’t mind the possibility of STIs, weird drama or the potential for unwanted phone calls, etc later.  Most men aren’t in that position.  What you’re paying a sex worker for is competence, professionalism, cleanliness & discretion.  If you’re OK with fucking incompetent, indiscreet, unpredictable amateurs with questionable sanitary habits, go for it.  But remember that free pussy is the most expensive kind.  An experienced sex worker provides quality, cleanliness, expertise, punctuality and the kind of company you want, when you want it, instead of having to cater to someone else’s unpredictable needs.  A guy who contacts me spends a few minutes in the contact and screening process, then gets a lady of known high quality for however long he can afford.  A dude who gets to bars doesn’t know how long it’ll take and gets an encounter of unknown quality, unknown strings & possible STIs.  It’s true that sometimes you can find something really valuable for $10 at a junk shop, but it takes time & you can’t count on it.  This isn’t rocket science; it’s a simple case of “you get what you pay for”, which is why we’ve been popular with gents since prehistory.

I love my wife and we have a great life together, but I resent the hell out of her not being more adventurous in bed.  I have a cuckold fantasy that I would never follow through on because fantasy is often more fun than reality, but I want some occasional dirty talk in bed about other men she was with before we were married or would like to be with now.  She’s too uptight to actually try anything kinky, but I don’t see how talking and fantasizing is an unreasonable expectation. I would do anything for her; I’ve begged her to tell me her fantasy and I will make it happen.  But her response is, “I don’t really have any”.  Who doesn’t have sexual fantasies?  I’ve bitched about it plenty of times to no avail, and I think she would do it if I demanded it, but that would be a hollow victory; that she won’t do this willingly makes me feel unappreciated.  I also don’t want to cheat, so how do I get her to come around?  Or can I?

Despite what the anti-sex crowd likes to pretend, sexuality is not a mere “choice”, something dropped on top of a person’s personality at the last minute like pickles on a cheeseburger; it is a deep and intrinsic part of the human psyche, rooted in the hindbrain and woven throughout the psychic fabric.  Though we use the word “libido” colloquially as a synonym for “horniness”, it’s a lot more than that; Freud defined it as “the energy, regarded as a quantitative magnitude…of those instincts which have to do with all that may be comprised under the word ‘love’.”  He considered it part of the id, the unconscious structure of personality, and therefore no more a matter of choice than anything else springing from that tenebrous region of consciousness.  Now, we’ve learned a great deal since Freud’s day, and most psychologists feel he was wrong about a lot of things.  But this isn’t one of them; if anything, we have reached the collective conclusion that some aspects of a person’s sexuality are so deeply embedded as to constitute major structural elements of that person’s character, because such elements derive from idiosyncrasies of the brain architecture itself.  Homosexuals and bisexuals usually report feeling same-sex attraction from an extremely early age (mine goes back at least to my earliest distinct memories, about the age of four), and other sexual traits (such as my fascination with bondage) can start just as early.  Other aspects are not quite so deep-rooted, but still develop as interwoven components of personality development.  Sexual repression is in this zone; though people are not “born uptight”, the repression develops concurrently with sexual maturation.  The adage tells us, “as the twig is bent, so grows the tree”; though it isn’t possible to stop the tree of sexuality from growing, it certainly is possible to bend, warp and stunt its growth.  For example, though it isn’t possible to teach a child not to be gay, it is certainly possible to fill his brain with such fear, shame and self-loathing that he can never have a healthy sexual relationship with anyone, male or female.  Buried sexual feelings don’t die; they just rot in the dark (see page xx), decaying into something unwholesome or even noxious.

What this all boils down to is that it’s very, very unlikely you will be able to get her to change.  Oh, you might be able to get her to do what you ask, but she won’t like it, and will probably resent it.  Women who can be coaxed into stepping outside of their sexual comfort zones are generally those who were inclined to do so anyway, and merely need help to overcome their reservations or get “permission” to be “bad”.  The latter is one reason so many women enjoy submission or rape fantasies; they allow displacement of responsibility for being sexual.  And though it’s true that some women do indeed become more sexually open-minded and willing to experiment over time even without coaxing, they’re generally ones whose bent is already in that direction; they just need time for growth to catch up with inclination.  If you doubt what I’m saying, let’s try a thought experiment:  imagine it was your wife who was my reader, and she said described the same situation but ended with, “how can I get him to stop feeling this way?”  Just as you can’t help feeling the way you feel, she can’t help the way she feels, and the fact that yours is an urge while hers is an aversion is neither here nor there.  And while I am in no position to figure out why you have the kind of fantasies you have, it doesn’t take a latter-day Freud to guess why they make your wife uncomfortable.  Furthermore, though you are skeptical that your wife has no sexual fantasies, I can assure you that it is very possible that she has desires which never gel into fully-formed fantasies, or that she actually means A) “I have no fantasies I’m comfortable sharing”; B) “I have no fantasies which you could help me to realize”; or C) “There is no way I would ever want to make my fantasies happen”.  You should certainly understand “C” (the “good fantasy, bad reality” principle) because you yourself feel that way about cuckolding; what you may not grok is that for some people even the fantasy may be uncomfortable, however much it may arouse (I have some like that myself, of which the less said, the better).

My advice to you is not dissimilar to that I offered the reader in “Late Bloomer” (in Ask Maggie, Volume II):  while it’s possible therapy might help her to get over her hang-ups, I’m not really sanguine about that because the right therapeutic alchemy is difficult enough to achieve with two people, let alone three.  Keep gently trying to get her to open up, but don’t badger her and for Aphrodite’s sake please don’t utter anything that sounds remotely like a threat, because that will only poison the good parts of your relationship.  If your need to explore your fantasy is so strong that porn won’t fulfill it, that’s what whores are for; just be sure you pick a good, dependable one, be discreet, and visit her only as often as you need to scratch that special itch.

Is it normal to feel like a failure when you’re 21 and you still haven’t finished high school, even though your parents don’t make a huge deal out of it and are very supportive of you?

Very, very normal.  Many people are our own worst critics, including me.  When I look at myself in the mirror or in pictures, every flaw jumps out at me, and other people often praise essays of mine which I thought were lackluster and phoned-in.  In my personal life, I tend to blame myself for everything that goes wrong, every time there’s a bump or rough spot in a relationship, every time something doesn’t turn out quite as planned; I apologize so often for things that aren’t my fault that the people who love me sometimes fuss me about it and insist I stop apologizing.  The number of times Matisse or Lorelei or Grace or someone else who loves me has said, “Maggie, you are not [bad thing I just said about myself],” are literally countless.  And I feel like a failure so often I doubt I ever make it through a week without experiencing that at least a couple of times.

The truth is that, we all have strengths and weaknesses, and we ourselves are often very poor at weighing those against one another.  There are many things I’m extremely good at (like sex and writing), and many things I’m extremely bad at (like keeping quiet or dealing with formal systems), and I often feel that the bad things outweigh the good.  But people who love me are there to tell me the truth, and to help me keep perspective.  It may be that you’re not very good at doing the formal education thing, but I’m sure there are plenty of things you didn’t mention in your letter that you’re very good at.  And if the people who love you (in this case your parents) are supportive and don’t think it’s important that you haven’t yet finished high school, then try to draw some balance from them.  Focus on the things you’re good at and work to get better at them, and try to remember that our brains often lie to us about ourselves, and that you aren’t alone in that respect; it is, I’m sad to say, part of the human condition.  But fortunately, we don’t have to rely only on our own perceptions and thoughts; we also have people we love and trust, and they can help us to recognize ourselves as lovable and valuable human beings even when we ourselves can’t see it.

I am a mistress right now.  I love my boyfriend very much, but I am very confused about everything that I have researched about mistresses and wives.  Apparently, I am supposed to be a homewrecker, an evil temptress whose only desire is to take him away from his family.  Nothing could be further from my mind–I even give my boyfriend advice on how to get along with his wife.  The more I look around the net, the more I find sites that tell me how I am going to be disappointed because he will not leave his wife, because he uses me sexually, because I will not have an intimate emotional connection with him.  But I do not want him to leave his wife, and if the affair was ever discovered I would call her and promise her that I would never see him again so that he can be with his family.  I don’t get money from him, either; I don’t really understand how I am supposed to fit into the expectations society has of mistresses.

When I was a teenager, I figured that my sexuality made me a weirdo.  I didn’t think sex was some special, magical thing to be shared only with certain consecrated people; nor did I believe it was dirty and polluting and had some special power to destroy my soul.  I was attracted to men and women equally, was willing to try new things, and was polyamorous at a time and place where that term didn’t exist (we called them “open relationships”, and some of my older partners called it “free love”).  The idea of jealousy made no sense at all to me; I didn’t care if my partners had sex with other people and I probably had more three-ways before I was 20 than more conventional girls have had sex partners of any kind.  But society told me that was all abnormal; sex possessed some kind of magical mumbo-jumbo taboo energy which made it different from all other human activity, and if I had “too much” I would be “ruined”, and I should be angry and hostile and hateful and throw my relationship away if I discovered a boyfriend or girlfriend had slept with somebody else.  I didn’t believe any of that crap, but I did believe that believing in it was “normal”; I was therefore a freak.  By the end of my twenties I had a much broader outlook; I felt that everyone was different, and that my way of perceiving sex was no less “normal” than the more common view.  But after decades of harlotry, I’ve begun to realize that my initial position was closer to the truth, except for one big difference:  I’m not the one with the freakish way of looking at sex; society at large is.  Sex isn’t any more magical or holy or special than any other thing we can do with other people; it doesn’t have any unique power to destroy souls, and it isn’t “ruined” or “polluted” or whatever if one has it with multiple partners, or pays for it, or engages in it for reasons other than “love” or “pleasure”.  Rape is not a fate worse than death, sex society brands as “illicit” is mostly harmful to young people because of the stigma society inflicts rather than because of the activity itself, and extramarital sex has no intrinsic power to “wreck” a home; it’s jealousy and insecurity which do that.  The taboo/magical/possessive paradigm of sexuality is deeply sick and twisted, and has probably caused more evil, sorrow and destruction than any other single cultural construct on earth.

There’s an old adage that goes, “in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” but that’s total bullshit; as H.G. Wells illustrated in his story “The Country of the Blind“, the real response of a nation of blind people to someone trying to describe the concept of sight would be to conclude he was an imbecile.  Were the hypothetical one-eyed man to peruse the (Braille-like) records of this blind nation, he might discover other cases of “sick”, “crazy” and perhaps even “dangerous” individuals who had claimed to possess this imaginary power called “sight”; he might even find analyses of why these people should give up their delusions of a fifth sense, and how they’d never be happy or fit into society until they stopped claiming to see, or possibly even descriptions of how such troublemakers had been sentenced to have their eyes plucked out to rid them of this twisted delusion of “sight”.  What I’m getting at is this:  there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you or your way of looking at your relationship, but since you live in the Country of the Blind, don’t be surprised if the great majority can’t understand your gift of sight.  And because they can’t, they will all try to convince you that you’re the one who’s wrong and sick.

Recently, I saw an escort who had a rash on her behind and thighs.  She said she had been laying on her belly on the beach and fell asleep, resulting in a serious burn which also caused a rash.  The rash did not look like herpes, but I am worried about carrying it to a girl I’m dating even though the sex was protected and the lady is meticulous about condom usage.  Do you think she was telling the truth?

There’s a really, really simple way to be sure about this: get tested.  If she was lying, you’ll know soon enough.  But I’m sure you already thought of that; it’s pretty obvious.  It is, in fact, so obvious that I have to wonder why you didn’t simply do it instead of writing me about it.  And what I think is that you aren’t really worried about an actual disease spread by a pathogen, but rather an imaginary “contagion” of sin.  You don’t owe fidelity to a girl you’re simply dating, but I suspect you’re more serious about her than y’all have officially agreed to be, and because of that you feel guilty about having visited a whore.   Sex with a professional would not be the same as cheating even if the two of you had a monogamous relationship, which you don’t; feeling guilt when the two of you aren’t committed makes even less sense.  And I hardly need to tell you that you’ve got far more chance of catching something from the amateurs (see “Dirty Whores” in The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I) you’re implicitly allowed to date than from professionals.

I’m a 33 year old man who was the victim of more than 20 years of physical, emotional and non-penetrative sexual abuse; as you might imagine this has impacted my sexuality in pretty negative ways.  But thanks to more than a decade of therapy, I believe that I have put the most of the worst behind me and I would like to lose my virginity.  I respect prostitutes a great deal, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t want that as my first experience.  I could go out and get a girlfriend (I’m actually quite comfortable with women), or I could attempt to have a one-night stand, though I don’t know the first thing about doing that.  I could go back into more therapy, but at this point I’m leaning towards doing the deed itself being the best form of that.  I would appreciate any assistance you might possibly render with your wisdom and experience in this field.

There’s nothing wrong with taking the slow, socially-approved route of getting a girlfriend and losing your virginity to her, provided you

A) aren’t in a rush;

B) are reasonably sure you won’t have any extreme reactions if she accidentally does something that triggers a traumatic memory; and

C) don’t really care about the quality of the sexual performance itself.

If, however, you feel a sense of urgency about this, like you “need” to lose your virginity right away, it’s probably much better to get a professional.  With a pro you can control the time and pacing; it will happen when YOU are ready, not when an amateur decides she’s ready.  And while navigating the dance of consent and the give-and-take of a romantic relationship is probably something you should learn at some point in the future, learning it right now, at a time when you aren’t sure you’re completely over your trauma yet, might be more than you can handle.  Furthermore, I’m a little uncomfortable with the way you say, “go out and get a girlfriend”, like “go and get takeout food”.  It makes it sound like you plan to use her to lose your virginity, and then…what?  What if you have a traumatic reaction, as I touched on above?  What if you get really needily-attached to her, or have a bad experience and reject her?  While those are things an adult woman should be able to handle, it’s just not ethical to dump your garbage in someone else’s yard without her permission, and frankly, most amateurs really have no idea what they’re doing when it comes to dealing with any sexuality more complicated than the typical vanilla “love” or lust-based interaction (which is why their STI rates are so damned high).  To me it’s a lot more honest, ethical and sensible for you to pay a seasoned professional (choose one who has a long internet history and a reputation for patience) for a multi-hour session, take her to dinner, get to feel comfortable and tell her about your issues so she can be ready.  Once you’ve got that troublesome first time out of the way, you can decide how you want to proceed in the future.  But given that most amateurs are barely even competent to give an untraumatized person a decent first time, I think your reticence runs counter to your best interests.  At one time it was quite normal for young men to have their first experiences with a whore; the modern preoccupation with amateur initiations is based in foolish romanticism, not good sense and a sober analysis of what would provide the best results.

I asked a close friend who isn’t a sex worker to be my safe call.  Initially she agreed, but now suddenly she said she doesn’t want to hear about it, because she disapproves of my work and does not want to support it in any way.  There’s no one else I trust enough, so I’m hurt and feeling let down by my friend.  We’ve always been honest with and accepting of one another before, so why is this different?

Stigma is an awful thing; it tempts otherwise-good people to shun or mistreat the stigmatized individual, encourages the weak-minded to view her as subhuman, and provides an excuse for evil people to harm or even kill her.  Perhaps at some point in our evolutionary history, “othering” fulfilled some useful function by allowing a band of proto-humans to exile or kill an individual who somehow imperiled the others’ survival, but nowadays the capacity for disconnecting one’s empathy and seeing another as a thing rather than as a brother or sister human is a dangerous atavism exploited by rulers as a tool for persecution of despised minorities.  Once the hatemongers succeed in convincing the masses that some real or imaginary group – Jews, aboriginal people, black people, the mentally ill, immigrants, queer people, “addicts”, “witches”, sex workers, clients, “sex offenders”, etc – is a threat to Our Treasured Way of Life, the majority will support denying members of that group even the most elementary level of decent treatment.  Though we all carry this nasty ability to dehumanize other humans in our brains, it’s far nearer the surface in some individuals; they’re the ones who can always be counted on to turn in their neighbors and family members to the secret police or Inquisition.  I don’t think they’re necessarily bad people; they’re just extremely susceptible to suggestions that some individuals need to be ostracized or even “punished”, personal affection notwithstanding.

I suspect your friend may be one of those individuals; she has bought in to the lie that compensated sex is a Great Social Evil that Must Be Stopped (for the children!), and your willing participation in it marks you as a Them who doesn’t deserve to be treated with the basic consideration one gives one’s friends.  She may believe that she’s demonstrating “tough love” by denying you safety, in the hopes that you’ll be scared out of what she views as unhealthy or “bad” behavior (despite the fact that you aren’t her minor child); if you get killed it’ll serve you right and teach your ghost a lesson, by golly!

Obviously, you can’t trust this friend to help you; I think you have every right to feel hurt and let down, and I wouldn’t blame you if you decided her friendship was insincere.  But while you’re wrestling with that question (and believe me, I don’t envy you the struggle), you still have the practical concern of finding someone to monitor you while in session with clients.  Are you friendly with any sex workers online?  With modern technology there’s no real need for the two of you to be in the same city; after all, she wouldn’t go to investigate in person if you failed to call in, now would she?  A lady in the UK, US, Australia or any other place could call for help just as easily as one in your own country, provided she was supplied with whatever emergency numbers you feel necessary.  And you could even perform the same service for her in return.

I have a “good girl” job and a secret sex work career; aside from my clients, there are exactly two people on this earth who know what I do – and one of those is my therapist.  I feel zero shame about doing what I do, and have felt it as a calling from a young age; however, I’m deeply aware of the consequences of exposure.  But I’m quite clear that my silence comes at the cost of isolation, so I’d like to change that and develop a support system.

There are a lot of sex workers who don’t have a support system or peer friends they can turn to; as you point out, this work can be very isolating because the stigma makes it difficult-to-impossible to discuss with anyone who isn’t a fellow inhabitant of the demimonde.  And since we’re in the midst of a moral panic over our work, the danger isn’t just emotional but physical; sex workers can be arrested, see their businesses and careers (both sex-related and “straight”) destroyed, have their kids abducted by the State, lose friends and family or even be infantilized and forced into “treatment” or “diversion” programs which treat our choices, jobs and sexualities as pathological.  If you live in a city with a SWOP chapter, I suggest you join right away if at all possible; your privacy will be respected and you’ll meet other sex workers to talk to.  If there is no nearby sex worker group, or if you feel uncomfortable attending meetings in real life, I strongly suggest you reach out to other sex workers on social media; you’d be amazed how much it can help and how real & strong those friendships can become.  For example, Mistress Matisse & I met online years ago, and now we’re extremely close friends in real life; I’ve also met & befriended many other sex workers on social media, and have developed strong bonds even with folks I haven’t met in the flesh.  Such connections not only help to keep physically-isolated sex workers emotionally healthy, but can also help us to stay safe.  And best of all, they remind us that we’re not alone, that the anti-sex busybodies cannot control us and that we are slowly but surely moving toward a day when we don’t need to hide any more.

I recently started dating an escort that I’ve been seeing professionally for a while, but I found out that all of her escort friends are warning her away from me.  Why are they so skeptical about my feelings toward her?

Relationships with escorts are fraught with complications for a number reasons, including but not limited to:

• Clients trying to get free sex by promising “love”, just as men have done to amateur women for millennia;
• Clients who are turned on by whores qua whores, and not really attracted to the women as individuals;
• Guys who really think they love a whore, but are not  prepared for the social stigma or the burden of having to keep her secret from employers, family, friends, etc;
• Men who really are in love with whores, but let jealousy destroy the relationships;
• Men who fancy themselves pimps and try to manage their girlfriends’ work, even to the point of abusive and controlling behavior;
• Boyfriends or husbands who demand that the sex worker give up her work and either become economically dependent (“barefoot and pregnant”) or go to work in a shitty non-sex “straight” job that will wear her down (see page ForLove);
• Clients who think they’re in love with a woman, but are actually just infatuated with her business persona;
• Guys who imagine that sex workers’ sex drives are higher than those of amateur women, or that they’re always more open-minded about preferences and kinks that they’re not being paid to indulge.

Those last two are probably the most insidious, because they may be hard for either party to tell apart from real affection and only reveal themselves once the couple is cohabiting and he discovers that he doesn’t like her relaxed, yoga-pants-wearing, housework-hating, menstruating, bad-hair-day-having, moody, personal-problem-suffering, family-drama-experiencing, opinion-expressing, not-always-in-the-mood, idiosyncratic self.  And this is just a start; if I sat here for a while I could probably think of half a dozen more.  I’m not saying a relationship with a sex worker is impossible; most of us do indeed have intimate partners, most of whom are male and some fraction of whom were formerly clients.  But there are special difficulties inherent in such relationships that require patience, wisdom and love to overcome or circumvent, and because several of those only apply to partners who started as clients, many sex workers are of the opinion that it’s better to minimize problems by eliminating those potential avenues of difficulty through the strategy of never, ever becoming emotionally involved with clients in the first place.

How can I convince my wife to see an escort with me?

The short, pithy, and not-entirely-accurate answer is, “You can’t.”  Now, hear me out; I’m not just being a killjoy.  That answer is based on some assumptions, hence the “not entirely accurate” descriptor; if any of these assumptions are incorrect, the short answer also might not be.  However, I’m willing to bet that even as it is, it’s hovering around the 75^th percentile of applicability.

First of all, if your wife were the “game for anything” type, you probably wouldn’t have asked me this question; the two of you would’ve already discussed it, and even if she said “no”, prior experience would almost certainly give you a hint as to how to proceed in convincing her.  I’m also going to assume that she has never expressed a strong interest in bringing another woman into bed with you; if she had, it would’ve been a simple matter for you to say, “That sounds like a great idea, but we should probably just hire a pro so as to avoid awkward situations with friends and the uncertainty & weirdness of trying to pick up a gal together at a bar or party.”  I’m even going to assume that she has not openly (or even coyly) expressed a desire to “spice up” your sex lives, because that would’ve given you an opening to suggest something.  No, I’m going to assume that you’ve had a pretty vanilla sex life so far, and that you have a fantasy of being in bed with two women that she doesn’t (to your knowledge) share.  And if that’s the case, please reread the first line of this essay.

Now, there are a few caveats; you might try making a kind of vague suggestion about spicing up your sex lives, and see where that leads you.  But before you do that, I need to give you two warnings:

A) It’s not unusual for vanilla amateur women to react to such a suggestion by taking it personally and getting angry at you for insinuating that your sex life is boring; the mere suggestion may precipitate an argument in which work, children and the fact that you don’t pay much attention to her any more will almost certainly be mentioned.

B) Even if A doesn’t happen, most vanilla amateur women’s idea of “spicing things up” is a “romantic” (and much more expensive than hiring me for two hours) vacation to a quaint little bed and breakfast.  Or Hawaii.  During which you may or may not have the same kind of boring sex you’ve had for years, only in a different (and much more expensive) bed.

Do I sound a bit jaded?  You’ll have to forgive me; even before I was a professional I had a long history of being “the other woman” (for partners of both sexes) and the understanding friend who consoles people over their romantic difficulties.  And I’ve seen this script played out on a regular basis since 1983.  The sad fact of the matter is, the majority of modern American women have been thoroughly brainwashed into the belief that male sexuality is inherently pathological, and your desire for variety will be dismissed as a sign that something is wrong with you and/or that you don’t love her any more.  Please don’t take this as meaning I’m letting men off the hook; there are plenty of things men could do to improve their marriages, but that wasn’t the question which was asked.  And though men are usually more receptive to trying out their female partners’ fantasies than vice versa, that isn’t necessarily the case if said fantasy threatens his delicate ego in the same way that a man’s desire for variety can threaten a woman’s sense of security.  Furthermore, as I can assure you from both personal experience and the experiences of female friends, vanilla men are every bit as likely to be squicked out by kinky fantasies they don’t share as vanilla women are.  My advice to any man who wants to be in bed with two women is, unless your wife has clearly expressed interest in such a thing, just ask an escort to arrange a duo for you; you’ll get what you want without drama, and it’ll be a lot cheaper in the long run.

My wife and I have been together for 13 years, and our sex life is basically nonexistent.  She was always very conservative about what she would do, but she has serious chronic health problems so even straight intercourse is now rare (less than 20 times in the past 3 years).  She’s an excellent housewife who takes excellent care of me and my son, and I love her and would never want to hurt her.  But I do need sex, and if I bring it up she says it’s because I watch too much porn.  So I decided to see an escort and found one I think I’ll like, but what if I become addicted to seeing escorts?  I searched the internet and found that this can be a scary addiction that can cause a marriage to crumble.  How can I know if I’ll be addicted or not?

Your situation is not at all unusual.  Though there are various reasons for it and various degrees of the problem, the basic situation (husband wants more and better sex than wife will give) is so common it probably accounts for the majority of sex workers’ business and I’ve written about it many times.  “The Twig is Bent” (page xx), “Fossil” (Ask Maggie, Volume II), “Familiarity Does Its Thing” (page xx), “On a Mountaintop” (page xx), “Late Bloomer” (Ask Maggie, Volume II) and “There Ain’t No Bad Guys” (page xx) all contain advice that you may find useful, but it’s clear that you also feel guilty about getting your needs met.  If your wife said, “if you wouldn’t look at food on TV you wouldn’t need to eat,” you’d recognize this as a patent absurdity, yet our culture tries to convince people this is true of sex; the myth of “sex addiction” is part of that attempt.  It is impossible to get “addicted” to escorts, just as it’s impossible to be “addicted” to sex or porn (and if you don’t believe me, you may want to read some of the work of my friend Dr. David Ley).  It’s certainly possible to become obsessed with seeing escorts, because people can become obsessed with anything from stamps to television shows to policing other people’s sex lives.  But if you don’t have a history of becoming obsessed with things, you needn’t worry that it will suddenly happen now.  Escorts are not witches with the ability to enchant you with a kiss; we’re just ordinary women providing a service.  So unless you’ve had problems with spending too much money on liquor or cigarettes or gambling or DVDs or strippers or whatever in the past, I sincerely doubt you’ll run yourself broke with escorts.  Once you see a few you’ll be able to determine how often you need it and how much you can afford, and then as long as you’re careful you might actually find (as so many men have before you) that seeing sex workers saves your marriage rather than endangers it.

You’ve mentioned several times that you’ve never really “amateur dated”, but you’ve also said you were promiscuous before becoming a pro.  Those seem to contradict each other; could you explain?

By the standards of the 1970s, my mother was quite overprotective; her level of caution would be considered fairly low in these days of bubble-wrapping and helicopter parenting, but 40 years ago she was definitely on the strict side.  Like modern parents, she seemed bound and determined to control my natural free-spiritedness and to delay my sexual maturation for as long as possible, and part of that was she did not allow me to date until I was 16, and even then only in groups to chaperoned events.  Of course, that backfired (as authoritarian prohibitions generally do); all it did was to stop me from dating, but not to stop me from having sex (especially since nobody bothered to chaperon me when I was alone with other girls).  It did, however, mean that I never developed the weird habit of going places with guys I barely knew and then letting them grope me.  By the time I was out from under my mother’s roof I had already had my heart broken once and wasn’t exactly eager to experience it again; I had a few long-term arrangements with women, including my second heartbreak and my first sugar mama, but until my first husband started pursuing me my relationships with guys were largely pragmatic rather than based on mutual attraction.  After he left me I didn’t want to be with anybody for a long time, and by the time that feeling faded I was already a pro and had no interest in giving away that which I could sell.  So even though I had sex with a lot of strange men in my teens, they were all guys I met via my social group and my motive was profit or some other practical thing rather than auditioning partners; the majority of girls who hit on me were already partnered with men and were only interested in experimentation (except for that second heartbreak, about which the less said, the better).  Therefore, even though it wouldn’t be accurate to say I’ve never been on an uncompensated date, the idea of making a regular practice of going out with strangers of either gender and giving them sex for free, and of wanting to do that badly enough that I actually take the time & trouble to create an ad on a website and somehow work out how to decide which messages are even worth answering (again, without profit in mind), is so alien to me that it’s like an outlandish custom practiced by some exotic culture I read about in National Geographic.

I’m in love with a sex worker, and we’ve decided we are going to live together and she is going to retire and pursue a “normal” career.  Despite having a degree and being intelligent and capable, she’s concerned about getting work; I’ve told her I don’t have a problem with her seeing her more trustworthy regulars from time to time until she feels financially comfortable.  I’d be willing to support her completely, but financial independence is very important to her and she has said she doesn’t want to rely on me for support.  She reads your website avidly, so I wonder if you have any advice for us?

My biggest concern about the situation as described is that it’s nearly always a bad idea for a sex worker to stop working for love.  I did it, and it set the stage for two separate financial debacles in 2004 and 2008; I never fully recovered from the second one.  I’ve also seen others do it, with results ranging from OK to disastrous.  If your lady wants to quit sex work for other reasons that have nothing to do with you, well and fine; but if the sole reason she’s quitting to pursue a relatively low-paying “normal” job (in a bad economy, yet) is because of your relationship, she is making a mistake (potentially a very serious one).  The stress, drudgery and inadequate compensation of a “straight” job are likely to lead to resentment against you even if she makes the choice of her own free will, and if y’all get into dire financial straits because of the lesser income that resentment will be quadrupled.  Obviously, the choice should be hers and hers alone; neither you nor I nor her non-sex worker friends have any right to push her in either direction.  But she needs to deeply consider the potential consequences to her, to you, to your finances, and to your relationship if she leaves a well-paid job for which she’s temperamentally suited in favor of a less-remunerative one for which she isn’t.