Sunday, April 20, 2008

I Knew Deep In My Teenage Heart That Whores Were Blessed With The Secret Key To True Love

Whores always fascinated me, even as a young woman. They were so gutsy and independent, dark and a little dangerous. They possessed a mysterious sexual knowledge, presumably from the ancient Orient, and got to wear the coolest outfits: thigh-high red vinyl boots and sexy garter belts. They lived in fancy penthouses with white shag carpeting and slept all day. I knew deep in my teenage heart that whores were blessed with the secret key to true love: they could make any man fall in love with them with a single, mind-bending blow-job. Oh god, would I ever be good enough to be a beautiful hooker?

Unfortunately, there weren’t many hookers or pimps in the small college town where I grew up, so I began stealing books on prostitution from the local college library. My panties would get totally wet reading page after page about these cocky women who so easily embraced being sexual criminals. I would fantasize about moving to LA or New York and getting caught by a famous pimp, most likely at a bus stop. He’d romance me with his smooth rap and in no time at all make me his "bottom bitch." I would make one bad-ass hooker.

It wasn’t long before I discovered there actually were hookers and pimps in my hometown, and I began working at a gentleman’s club as a hostess. That lasted a week, and I started turning tricks. It wasn’t quite as I had romanticized it, and I was both thrilled and terrified most of the time. A few months later, I actually did get caught by a pimp passing through town, who took me first to Phoenix to learn how to work the streets and then to Hollywood. It was 1978.

Working the streets in the 70s was a lot of different than it is now. My stable sisters and I would dress like the models we saw in magazines, and my pimp Woody would drop us off on various streets to work long shifts. There were all sorts of rules: never smoke on the stroll (it wasn’t classy, although apparently sucking cock in some random motel room was), never talk to another pimp’s girls, and so on.

Eventually, the glamor wore off and the stress of the job, the weirdo tricks, and the fear and shame took over and I had to stay mildly drunk just to get through the day. I got mugged by another pimp when I broke a cardinal rule about not getting in another pimp’s car. I talked my way out of it and started hiding out in hotel lounges instead of working. Woody threatened to drown me in the Pacific Ocean. By the end of the year, I had had enough, returned home, enrolled in college and got married.

Flash-forward twenty-some years later. Divorced, mid-40s, single mom with two kids in a good career that just didn’t pay the bills. I started going to open mics with my poetry about my days as a hooker and met P. there. She, too, was an ex-hooker, and we became friends. In three years after my divorce, I fucked fifty-seven guys (almost all one-night stands), and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. P. and I started doing a lot of sex worker activism together, and pretty soon all my girlfriends were either former or current hookers, strippers and porn actors. P. decided to start escorting again, even though she was in her 40s like me. She was making money hand over fist, and it took a few more years, but I decided to give it a shot. I made a contract for myself that included such things as, "I will stay sober," "I will process my experience with others," and "I will never sacrifice my safety for money."

I’ve been an internet escort now for almost three years. I’m approaching fifty, am forty pounds overweight, attractive, and am still somewhat surprised by how much money I make. I charge as much as the younger, "hotter" girls do, and I have a total niche. While the young chicks and I share a lot of the same clients, I tend to get the ones who aren’t comfortable with the younger girls, or who want a mature woman with sexual experience. When I’m in bed with a client, I often get a sense of total bliss. I feel so incredibly blessed and lucky. I was born for whoring, it’s my true life’s calling. Working as a whore has been an incredibly empowering experience for me, the money of which is not the least of that, and my only regret is that I struggled financially for so long as a single mom until I started escorting.

I’m currently dating a former client who pays my bills, gives me a steady flow of cash and just bought me a car. He loves the fact that I’m a whore. It’s a turn-on for him. I’ll probably always work to some degree, whether I need the money or not. I just can’t imagine ever being chained to one penis for the rest of my life. It just wouldn’t seem fair.