I am enough

Being an escort isn’t enough. 

People aren’t looking for an escort that is just an escort anymore. Our field seems immune to developing 'experts' out of our veterans, rather longterm workers are being written off as one dimensional. To humanise us, it’s become integral to brand yourself so much more than 'just' a sex worker. We must be botanists, writers, dancers, nurses, animal lovers (VEGANS), art historians, podcasters, mothers, activists, and so on. We must have other passions that we dedicate 90% of our time to, in order to be deemed good company for the discerning client. Full-time whore just doesn’t have a wholesome enough ring to it apparently.

So often, clients want a companion who is just playing companion for fun on the sidelines, when their ‘real’ selves are functioning 9-5 in a more acceptable profession, holding down ten hobbies, writing memoirs, putting on red bottom shoes just for them, for their hour or two. Basically superhuman, with no real bills or problems. 

You’re going to scold me for being dramatic, shush, but I’ve been watching my occupation change and evolve my entire adult life (alright, that's not as long as it sounds) and this is the direction it’s taken. Clients, with the misconception that they’re being the ‘good guy’ by only picking an escort who is clearly only do this for funsies, as opposed to the rest of us who must be ‘coerced’ by capitalism, are placing these demands on the industry and it’s essentially gentrifying the industry, slowly pushing out workers who actually need the money, or legitimately just really don’t want to do anything else.

I don’t want to do anything else. It disappoints some of the more patriarchal clients I see, to hear, but it’s true. And this doesn’t make me uninteresting, or unevolved or unintelligent - in fact if anything I find it to be the opposite. I think I have one of the most interesting jobs in the world - not because the work itself is always particularly flamboyant or scandalous, but because I work with people - the most bizarre and interesting species of all, and at a level that’s deeper and more honest than any other profession. I’ve gotten very good at it and I’m far, far from bored with it. I plan on being an escort until the day my hips give out, and probably not a day less.

But every day, on my socials, I make sure that I talk about more than 'just' my job, it’s become critical. I make sure people know I love succulents, that I’m reading new books, going new places and that I’m busy and keeping fit. All of this is true. People want to hear that. Which is funny really, given how unrelated those things are to my work - sure sometimes those things come up in conversation, but I mean, my newest Aloe isn’t sucking anyone’s dick and giving them a cuddle afterwards, is it? They're certainly not the most interesting parts of me. Yet thousands of people around the world who have never paid me a cent, now know I love tiramisu and have two cups of white coffee in the morning, and that's become a stupid but important part of escort branding in 2021.

This increased need by clients to ‘humanise us’ beyond our actual job is contributing to burnout in sex workers, well before any of the actual work does. It’s time-consuming and taxing, and it makes people question themselves. It’s no longer a matter of ‘am I pretty enough’, ‘am I good enough at head?’, it’s also now - ‘am I worthy enough as a person?’ - and that’s damaging. No longer is it just a handful of elite courtesans who must be multilingual and mysteriously, wonderfully hyper-intellectual - it’s now the everyday escort who has a spread of small-time clients too. We are all now held to the standards of the upper echelon paramours of old, who have one or two Johns and retire into gifted estates (look, I’ve read about these women in books but I’ve never met any…lol). Escorts are faking (or not) degrees left right and centre, for a job that actually has no entry requirements, and for what? To impress a client that books an hour and calls you Brandy by mistake? Our industry is surely not THIS competitive.

What does it take to be a good escort? Sure I guess being moderately attractive might be important, although not as much as one might think; able to a point to compartmentalise sex so that you can do it with pretty much anyone, can do the sex, can do the sex safely… but mostly it’s being compassionate, tender, business savvy, patient, and able to be or at least pretend to be, interested in people - all people. So what on earth does it matter if your escort also holds down a day job, won Silver at the Commonwealth Games and can speak 4 languages (and I KNOW your Spanish isn’t as fluent as you claim it is, Sir). Self accomplishment has little at all to do with you, or anyone other than themselves. So it just doesn't matter. Over and over again we’re being asked to prove our ‘depth’, before payment is exchanged. It’s just another form of trophy collecting - they want to believe they bedded someone of a societal level they aspire to be at - even if it’s entirely irrelevant to the job at hand. God forbid one only books a ‘whore’. Most of the clients insistent on higher education and a country count of 20+, are not booking anyone for more than a few hours/ a week or two of rent. That’s hardly life altering is it, especially for one supposedly so ‘upper class’? These expectations have always previously been held of courtesans with VERY generous allowances.

People often tell me, that they think it makes someone more interesting if escorting is just a small avenue in their otherwise busy, respectable life. It’s untrue - what it often makes people, is TIRED. If your escort holds down three jobs, globe trots and spends all night studying microeconomics and staying on top of popular culture - they’re probably just exhausted! It isn’t to say these things are bad, of course not, but it’s just not all that relevant to the warmth of their personality or what they can do for your genitals - the stuff that actually matters for your experience.

I spend most of my personal life with people outside of this industry - people considered ‘respectable’, with good jobs and tertiary education. It’s my reprieve from my field, to immerse myself in people who’ve never heard of the term ‘ugly mug’. I will tell you this - adore them as I do - they’re not more interesting than me. They simply do not have time to be! They’re definitely not happier, tend to have 8pm bedtimes (or wear lack of sleep under their eyes), talk mostly about office politics, are more burnt out and are chronically underpaid. They also have to ask Office Daddy for a day off. Very much so like our clients themselves. So I can’t imagine how picking up another job or three competitive hobbies could in anyway help bring more to my sessions, if anything I’d be depleted, have less time and would have to charge three times as much for the same, if not crappier service - then people really would complain!

Often people say to me, when I respond that people and intimacy are my biggest passions, ‘why don’t you turn that into a career? Study it!’. Well, err, I did turn it into a career - and I didn’t need to spend 80k on a degree to do it! (don't ask me about my student loan though, ugh). I also get paid more and have more time for myself than most academics and people in other people-centric jobs. So isn’t this the smartest option here? I have studied, but ultimately feel it’s been a waste of time and money, and I have the freedom to read a lot and speak to so many people from so many walks of life, that I really am learning constantly. I’ve talked to people in professions I’ve never heard of, talked to your Boss, seen his cum face, and probably met the ‘next big thing’ in the ‘next big’ field. And I don’t know anyone in my circle who can read people, and entertain, as consistently as I can. That sounds arrogant, but that’s a really cool skill that you cannot learn in academia. Where else can you learn to compose threesomes where everyone gets off and noone is left out? Not from a Psychology degree, that would certainly be questionable. Interpersonal skills are valid, valuable and actually relevant to my profession. Yet, I will never earn a certificate of expertise in my field, there's no honour to attain, it simply doesn't exist. So people seem unable to respect it. 

I remember vividly a conversation with a client, otherwise very nice, who acknowledged they sought only the most accomplished of women, who made a statement similar to, 'well would you rather I treated women like sex dolls, I want someone who is more than a cum bucket'. Well, to this I would say, how many degrees does it take for you to stop viewing women as cum buckets? One, two? This to me displayed deeply entrenched misogyny, that really has nothing to do with any of the escorts he books, and everything to do with his inability to see us as people to begin with. Sometimes 'nice guy' behaviour is just bacon-wrapped sexism.

Each and every escort you meet is interesting and has depth - firstly because they’re just human beings, but also it’s just who we are. We are entertainers, and although I’m biased, every sex worker I’ve met has just been really cool in their own way. We shouldn't have to expose our lives or pad our social CV's to prove that. The pressure to show to the world over and over again that we are this or we are that, unrelated to our profession is just new world stigma. My succulents are actually criminally uninteresting (and neglected) next to my tits and the sound of my laughter, so forget about them. The moral panic around sex work makes people want to dig further into our being, to make sure we are only here for the fun of their company, god forbid we may just have bills to pay, or may actually get benefit from earning money in a way that’s flexible and not hideously tedious. Oftentimes these clients are otherwise good clients, unawares they’re buying into an elitist trope that hurts so much of the industry, shovelling away with their nosey spades into our socials to make sure we’re perfectly deep enough for their satisfaction. I wish I could scream it from atop their overpriced hotels, for goodness sakes -

 I AM ENOUGH.

PETRA FOX

Twitter: @foxandthefeline

Instagram: @foxandthefeline

Web: petrafox.com.au