I suspect that, at least to some extent, we all hope for the same thing; we men-who-see-sex-workers; we clients. I suspect we all hope to leave something behind that goes beyond the rumpled sheets, the condoms and the wet bathroom towels; something to separate the time she spent with us from the time she spent with someone else; some special memory of our brief liaison.
Or perhaps I’m just reflecting the naïve and unrealistic desire for self-affirmation of another typically egotistical male.
I recently read a well argued Twitter thread from a sex worker pointing out the fundamental fallacy behind the feelings clients sometimes develop for her and her peers. The affection, she stated, is not for the person the client is with, but for a fantasy created by that person, perfectly matched to his very specific desires. “This is your experience, it is not her experience”, she argued. She bid us imagine a personal trainer who spends an hour putting a client through an exercise routine then goes home to perform his own workout. The first session was the client’s session, not the trainer’s, and so it is, she said, with sex workers.
Perhaps then, it is unreasonable, even open to ridicule, for a 60 year old man to expect a woman half his age to take anything from their time together; to expect her to regard that time as anything other than a job.
I wonder, though, if some sex workers might see it differently. Perhaps, rather than NONE of it being THEIR experience, ALL of it is. Perhaps they see their experience of sex and sex work being the sum of all the sessions with all the men; with all the little things, good or bad, they took from each session making a contribution. I know I’ve explored things with Elita, Lilly and others that were new to them, and I would like to think that the things they took from those experiences, however infinitesimal each might seem, became part of that experiential whole.
Last week I spent some time with a Mistress of considerable repute whom I have previously only seen with Elita. This Mistress, who eschews social media and prefers to remain anonymous, is stunningly beautiful and exceptionally skilled. She keeps her own chambers in central London; the smartest, best equipped BDSM play-space I have ever been hurt in.
I found the session both exceptionally challenging and exceptionally erotic. She would look into my eyes from close up while she hurt me, challenging me to hold her bold, half smiling, half quizzical gaze while pain coursed through my body. I sensed a connection with her in those moments, as I did at the end of the session when she stood behind me with her hands motionless on my shoulders while I gave in to a succession of post-orgasm aftershocks. It was wonderful, feeling vulnerable as I always do in that moment, to sense her calm presence.
After we’d finished she said, in a very simple and matter of fact way: “I really enjoyed you.”
I really enjoyed you.
How wonderful that this beautiful, sophisticated, talented Dominatrix, should feel that way about our short session. She amplified that thought a little in her response to my “Thank you, Mistress, that was amazing” email:
“I thoroughly enjoyed our time together. You’re a wonderfully responsive and receptive victim/sub/masochist/subject.”
A cynic might say that this too was part of the act, part of the ‘giving me what I most want’ that is such a large part of sex work. But nothing about my experience over the last few years prompts me to look for artifice here. I’m delighted that she too took something from our time together; delighted that, in that sense, I was a good client.
But, most of all, I’m delighted that she really enjoyed me.
More Wednesday wickedness here:
As interesting and thought-provoking as ever! Xx
I am glad you had a wonderful time and that is a lovely thing for her to say to you
Mollyx
What a wonderful thing of her to say, and somehow, I don’t think it was just part of the act/job. I can understand how some sex workers might say things they think their clients want to hear, but I also think that part of their own nature shines through too and not all things they say are because they are being paid for it. Love that you had such a great experience with her 🙂
Rebel xox
It’s a tough one to navigate. ‘The feels’ as I believe the thread you refer to is the more dangerous side of things, but to avoid getting caught in that, the seemingly obvious alternative mindset is to assume that it’s all an act. That the person in front of you is a construct made specifically for you that has no relation to the real person behind it.
I had some interesting conversations with the former mistress on this because I was fascinated by how she presented in different situations. In being owned there was nothing masked or hidden from me, she was herself. Once she turned pro, for clients she had to construct a base persona and then create various characters from it for different types of clients and decide what attributes of her real self each character might expose, if any.
Knowing this, these days in seeing a pro domme I can fall in to the trap of asking myself if any of it is real ? It can be a depressing thought train if you don’t catch it.
As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle and depends on the relationship with the domme. For a one off encounter you might as well assume she’s in character because you have no base line. See a domme regularly and it can be different. Sure she’s playing a character tailored for you but there’s leakage from the underlying person.
With my domme I hear emotions, opinions and reactions that I’ve come to learn are not faked. They and other signals help stop the confidence sapping question of what, if any, interest does she have in me ? The backstop answer is that I know I wouldn’t be there with her if she wasn’t interested in something beyond the fee.
As you say, it’s a very easy business to be cynical and despairing about. Perhaps I’d say that what my domme exposes to me is enough to suspend disbelief and so long as I observe that boundary, we seem to work well together.