My Guide to Dating an Escort (An Introduction)
After all I started this blog to write about this...
I wanted to share my experience for various reasons. Hell, present tense, I still want to.
So I want to share my experience, views, opinions and feelings about my situation. Our situation. How it is to be dating an escort. What you have to deal with on a day to day basis on various levels. As outlined in previous posts, there are different key points to this, because of the nature of job, and because of what it does to your relationship. It's not like the job does not have any impact whatsoever on your life. It is part of your life, of the decisions you take as a couple. You deal with jealousy, with fear of STDs, with money, with your own projection. You re-evaluate your self-respect, your vision of your significant other, and your environment.
Or you don't do all this, and you just let it go and see how it goes. That can work too.
The point is, I want to get people's opinions and feelings on this too. There is no such things as "Dating Escorts for Dummies". But it's not like there's absolutely no material either: there are thousands of people, dealing with these issues, from one side of the mirror or the other. And keeping it for themselves. Quiet and secret. As the French say: "pour vivre heureux, vivons caches". Yes, but on the other hand, having your head stuck in the sand is not always a very good defense mechanism (for one thing, you've got your bottom defenseless up there!) And while I pretty much dislike the idea of people getting more nerdy and wimpy online, using blogs as pseudo-technologically-reduced proxies for psychiatrists, and pouring their heart out without thinking twice about consequences for their own self-perception, I do think the internet is an incredible place to research material and produce a gigantic mass of free information for everyone to share. With care. That's the key. With a lot of care. People don't seem to realize (or they seem accept it as a necessary step or as an inevitable consequence of the modern age) that our modern culture, by taking down fences and walls protecting private spheres and letting the thin membrane between the individual and the crowd merge together, has possibly created as many emerging problems as it has solved.
Yes, I can see the glass-half-full point of view, and yes I think it is a logical evolution. Similarly, yes we spread diseases and have created a wonderfully chaotic eco-systems for virus to spread with our modern capitalist culture and our free trade regulations, reducing the bio-diversity of crops and cattle herds. This is a very bad idea and a very good proof of very poor and narrow-minded management, but on the other hand a difficult thing to avoid, which found its roots in good intentions: nurturing more people, producing more goods (and bad intentions: just making more money. Or at least for some people). That's a simplistic summary, but it serves its purpose here.
When it comes to mental stability, people used to deal with their problems on their own, possibly sharing some secrets with their partners, other with their relatives, and the rest with friends and co-workers. It's just as in modern social networks, you just define your circles of trust and the levels of information sharing (plus some human elements of failure and mis-judgment). Then we entered the era of the psychological being. Because we developed our civilization and interests for the man, and by detaching ourselves from religion (whether you are religious or not, the thing is religious entities did not really see medical research from a good eye for a long time, especially when it came to problems of the mind or spirit), we started researching what made us tick, and how. And we eventually came to consider it natural to confess our demons to, if not priests and journals, at least psychiatrists.
Blogs are not the new-thing-in-town. People wrote journals for centuries. In their own minds, in stories, in legends, engraved on tombstones or written on paper. But public ones generally were more restrained. More controlled. Self-censored. The internet opened a fantastic gateway to information sharing, and suddenly everyone on the web can become your personal therapist. It's just great: it's free, it's distributed, and hey, two minds are more efficient than one, so what about a few millions? Looks good on paper. Except for two major problems.
The first thing is, circles of trust are exactly that: circles of trust, that you define yourself. Would you go around and pour your heart out to your butcher in the new city you move in last month? Just like that. Without knowing the guy? Who knows what *he* has in his closets? I didn't think so... Basically, everyone on internet should be treated as a stranger, like you would do on a street. Be courteous, helpful, but slightly defiant. These people didn't earn your trust, so don't give it away for free. Because it is just much more valuable than that. It's priceless. And despite the confusing etymology, priceless doesn't mean that the price tag doesn't exist. Trust is a big problem here for various reasons. Because you share secrets. Because they can redistribute them, distort them, amplify them. Because they can forge fake secrets for you. Hey, you trusted them, others do, so basically they would trust what they say on your behalf. It's only natural, we all believe what our mummies and BFF told us without questioning them that much, don't we? The second issue with trust is expertise. How much do you trust these people, not only in regards privacy, but also about their level of expertise in the field you seek them out for? Do you see a degree on the wall? And if you see one, where does it come from? Do you check the unique identification number on it? Trust is tricky. Forging identities is not at all.
The second thing is this: what do you do to yourself when you go around talking about yourself? When someone does something bad, what do they do? They go around and look for support. Yes. They want people to tell them "nawww, you're right, I'd have done the same. F*ck it." Now that's handy: hey, statistically, you'll find a jack somewhere online to agree with you, no matter how dumb that thing you did or said could have been (and trust surfaces again: who says he or she agrees truthfully? People like to mock and joke around.) People used to have issues back then too. They just kept them for themselves. Of course sometimes you just can't keep it together anymore, and you need help to see it through and swim to the surface and take a good breath of fresh air, and avoid death by drowning. That's why overall, having *expert* people around is a good thing. For specific cases. Not to nourish your paranoia. Microsoft Research came up with a new name for this recently: >Cyberchondria. Come on, admit it. When you discovered a tiny new lump somewhere on your body, or had that recurring migraine come back, you checked it out online. And you saw the worst case scenarios and you lined up for breast-cancer screenings, full-body scans, or at least a normal GP appointment, and then you bugged him and asked him to be really careful with the examination. But, sometimes it's good. It works, and the mighty Internet gods helped you to diagnose your problems decently. Though rest assured internet is best used to diagnose flus and your cookie recipes than to identify lethal brain tumors. But still, sometimes it works. And you come across that person, that single individual, who was in the same case as you are now, and that guy can give you *the* advice, almost the perfect one, or a lest the preventive one. Or the one you want to hear. If you find one search result telling you things are looking pretty darn bad, you acknowledge the fact. If you find one good result saying you'll be fine, oooh, danger, maybe you should keep looking another 5 minutes, shouldn't you? Cyberchondria is evil and sneaky.
Furthermore, when you do seek expertise all too easily, you stop learning how to cope. You find that virtual shoulder to cry on, and you think it makes things better. Of course the shoulder will still be here tomorrow if you need it (Or at least your better hope so. That's already something to have *Hope*), and things might turn around, but it doesn't seem the sitting duck tactic is the best approach to problem-solving. Not dealing with your problems is just that: not dealing. It doesn't fix anything, it doesn't make it better. It doesn't make it worse either, which is great. That's a precautionous approach to risk management, but not the most optimized one. There's a huge difference between seeking advice and reporting all the tiny necrosis of your life on a public log and looking out for people lurking at it, the vultures and the parasites as well as the compassionate souls. One is proactive; the other one is just passive, endangering, aggravating.
There are areas where expertise is as sparse online as in real life. You would not have told your priest you are a prostitute (well, in the antiquity, you might have, actually. Those were the days, good old times, and so on... Geez, these Greeks were open-minded folks. Well, for some things, at least...), you wouldn't have told your family and friends, and not your doctor either. And definitely not the butcher or the village idiot. And now, even online, you can tell, much you still face a lot of problems. Anonymity pushes you to the trenches, and there's still that trust problem. Ah yes, the trust issue is still there. Can you take the advice of all these people online, and go out on an out-call just like that and tell yourself it will go according to plan, and escorting is a fun business, my dear, we all do it, after all, and we survive and like it, and so will you. Or can you trust all the ones telling you it's a sin, it's dangerous, it's sleazy, and there just cannot be any decent agency and any pleasure in doing this. Plus, you'll burn in Hell (ah yes, that one has been around for a few centuries now. See, we have trust issues. We are a bit blind-sided by nature... or a few centuries of - bad - education and obscurantism).
So I want to share thoughts, opinions, and feelings - Yes, we're back to that, thanks for sticking around for so long by the way - and write about *my* experiences, learn about *yours*, and eventually come to reach a decent level of knowledge about the topic. And as I can see so far, there's is a lot of content around here for sex-workers, especially on how to go daily about their job. How to keep themselves safe, find clients, have good reviews, be a good provider, screen bad johns, be the slut-that-guy-dreams-of or the sweet-girl-that-other-guy-fantasizes-about. There are topics on the dangers of the job, on its pros and cons, its addictions and their impacts on your life. But I also always come across that same topic all over again: relationships. Man, that's a tough one, isn't it? That's the real deal, after all. It's always hard in a stereotypical, "normal" situation, so there was not a chance in Hell it would be easier if you're an escort or dating one. And you will find a sh*t-load of accounts of failed and successful relationships online. Which you can or cannot trust. Which are either overly optimistic or pessimistic. Some will tell you it will happen at some point, but hey, you'll have to wait for that one. Not coming? Well, wait some more. Have faith (BAM! You just got it by the trust-bus again. Careful there, you might end up in Hell, remember?). Or just give it up: you'll never find it, you're doomed, you picked that career or were forced into it, and you'll end up alone and die in shame. Woohoo, enjoy, have a nice day.
There's something missing here. Obviously, being a virtual being myself, as all of you readers, the trust issue will be a tough one to address. Let's be honest, we can't even address it completely. But we can give it a shot, and I do want to try. Because it's just painful to see all of you out there suffering, in silence, behind your smiles. The ones you keep up for your clients so that they don't see the dark side of the moon, because you're selling dreams, remember? So smile, and take it like a (wo)man. The ones you keep up for your family, whether you came out to them or not, because you sell them another kind of dream: the dream of happiness, of success. Yours, and theirs, as they as bound to you, by flesh and blood, or just by legal or moral associations. And finally the ones you keep up for yourself, for your own motivation, to not give up. But still behind the smile, in your head, there's something going on, and ticking, and two more or less unconscious voices going off at each other. And you ache, and you still look for something. And that is just painful to live for me already, and I think I have come to realize now that is it even more painful to watch this show unroll itself on the online stage, in your distant and remote lives, so far from G.'s and mine, and yet so close.
That's why I'll write this guide. This weblog in itself was supposed to serve as a guide, as a reference material maybe for other persons feeling the same, but maybe there's more to do than just that. And I don't have the pretentious to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the topic, but at least I can try to gather expert knowledge on it. On the partner's side, and on the worker's side. And I hope some of you will help me with it.
I don't know yet how this guide will be organized and formatted. It will remain published as a journal, and I will try to address the topics I can think of and we'll see how it goes. I'll probably also publish it in a more standard form, for a guide. I don't think that would do well on a Wikipedia entry though, but a Wikibook or a Knol might do. Or just a normal page, organizing the mess of all the posts to come. That should be a long work, but I'm excited about it (as you can see by the length of this introduction). Because I think it's necessary and it's a sad state of affairs that there's not that much support online, whereas in so many other fields you would find whatever suits you.
I hope you'll like "My Guide to Dating an Escort". My Dating an Escort for Dummies, My What to Expect When You're Escorting.