I am humbled and honored to host Vanessa as an author on Sluttish. She will be telling you her stories of being a bondage model, a slave in a BDSM relation, a sex worker, a professional dominatrix, a lover. Please keep in mind, these stories are not here to lure people into sex work or present it in a glamorous way. The author is also not here to be judged. She is presenting her personal experience, with the ups and downs that all of us have in our career and life choices. And these are the goals of hosting these stories - to present sex work for what it is: work, and human sexuality with its rich and diverse flavors. Some of the stories talk about sensitive and maybe triggering issues, such as discovering your sexuality at an early age - please be respectful to what the author is sharing and rest assured she is not doing it to advertise one way or another of dealing with one's sexuality, but to present her very personal experience.

A prostitute, an escort, a fallen woman, lady of the night, call girl, whore. A rose by any other name I suppose.

Fact is that I didn’t enter into sex work through downfall, abuse and lack of self-respect, on the contrary. I grew up in a safe stable home with loving parents who are still happily married to this day. My parents have been behind me at every turn, and I have gone through life knowing that if something should ever happen my parents would be ready with a safety net and warm, open arms.

The story of how I became a sex worker started with me moving to a new country for a new job. I was alone and afraid but also excited. My parents told me before my departure that they expected me back within a year - that it was a phase, something I would get out of my system. To me it was something more, it was a new start. I was determined to prove to myself and to my family that it was more than a phase but it soon became clear that my new job simply didn’t pay enough. I was alone in a big city with no money and I was frequently reminded that i had no real reason to stay. My determination started to feel more like a childish tantrum then an adult and independent decision. I particularly remember walking the cold rainy streets of the new city I had fallen in love with while wondering if it was really just a crush.

I thought of my family and my friends - coming home to where I always had someone to see and talk to, be able to understand the language, to belong. My mother had said they could have me home within a week - It would be so easy to just get a plane ticket, ship my things, start over. I knew that if I left this city nobody would miss me - they would be sorry to see me go and then they would go on as if I was never here.

I stayed for a week - and another one and every time I almost booked my plane ticket home I stopped myself. I felt as if I had come here for a reason and that reason hadn’t happened yet. It was strange but this reason for staying felt critically important as if by leaving I was messing up some cosmic plan. It felt ridiculous but I decided to listen, I had to stay, I was supposed to stay. I started asking myself how much staying was worth to me.

When choosing to become a prostitute you will always be someone who is getting, or used to get paid for sex. The moment you make that choice you put a price tag on your body - a price tag on penetration, on touch and you set that extra fee for anal sex. Bottom line: Other people will always judge you but what matters is this; will you let this choice put a scarlet letter on your own chest and carry it like a cross for the rest of your days or will you keep moving and live without remorse?

I had one advantage in choosing this career path - I’m pretty so I was expensive and because I was expensive I didn’t have to do more than 1 to 2 bookings a week to make a great deal of money. I was mostly booked to expensive hotels in the city area and occasionally to private homes. Some people have asked me how I could have sex with men I wasn’t attracted to - to tell the truth, that part was easy. To me, sex and intimacy were two completely different things and I rarely felt any sexual arousal or pleasure while having sex with clients. It was mechanical.

I learned a lot through being an escort; I heard about unhappy marriages, I saw grown men cry, I met men who bought their first sexual experience from me in their thirties and I met men who were so lonely they happily paid my rate to have someone to talk to. Let me stress this point: Men who see prostitutes are not bad people. I find they are often portrayed that way and I find it unfair. Prostitutes are looked down on but they provide an important service, that’s why it’s a business that never slows down - because people need sex, physical contact, someone to talk to and not everyone meets someone who will provide this in a conventional way.

My colleagues were without exception strong and very tough women. I met escorts who worked to put themselves through school and had a goal of buying a property before graduation. I met escorts who did it solely for the lifestyle. I met escorts who did the job looking for a “pretty woman story”, (sans love and Richard Gere) and dreamed of marrying a walking bank account. One asked me with disbelief if I really had sex with men who didn’t pay me. “Sex is for the man”, she added, “he provides and you open your legs for him when he does, it’s true in every relationship”. She had been an escort for ten years and I wondered if she started with that mindset or if it came over time.

Overall it wasn’t romantic and though I did hear stories of escorts that had had certain clients for so long they started to consider it a sort of friendship - those stories were rare. Anonymity was the important part - you are at work, you keep business and pleasure separate. If he wants you to stay longer he pays more, cuddling is not included. They always ask what your “real name” is - and you give them another fake one. He asks where you live, where you are from - you make it up. No matter how nice he seems you present him with lies to make sure not a single piece of information is given about who you really are. You lie - you use the same story every time to make sure you don’t screw it up or wonder which version you told this particular client last time, and the story you tell becomes so rehearsed that one day you find yourself sitting across from a man on a real date - and when he asks you where you are from and where you live the lie is the first thing that comes into your mind. You even feel a slight shock when he calls you by your real name.

The truth is that being anonymous is lonely and it isolates you if you do it too often or for too long. I stopped at the right time. The beginning of the end was a date where no money changed hands. I’ll tell you about that later.

lede image Gabriel Santiago