Getting people off is only a small part of what sex workers do. “Escort” is often viewed as a polite euphemism, but most of what we give clients is time, attention, and company. Clients don’t just want orgasms, they want affirmation. They want to look and be looked at, desire and be desired, experience pleasure and take pleasure in their ability to give it in turn.

I’ve never, in years of sex work, met those mythical clients who really just want to talk. I believe they exist, ‘cause my fellow whores say they do. But I’ve never met ‘em.

I do know that every guy who sends me a cock shot asks, “Do you like it, baby?”

Look at me. Like me. Validate me.

Do you like it, baby?

That’s why my orgasm matters. There it is, the concrete evidence that I experienced real pleasure with and for and perhaps most importantly because of a client. Squirting seems to be all the rage these days and I get lots of requests for it, and I wonder if it isn’t because it’s just too damn tangible a proof of a (female-bodied) whore’s real pleasure.

After all, whores are all liars, aren’t we? Faking feelings and enjoyment for a paycheck? Isn’t it the ultimate demonstration of your sexual prowess? To make a whore feel something real?

Which is why my orgasm doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to me, because my orgasm was never about me, even if I had one. And it also doesn’t matter because if I succeed in giving my clients what they come for—attention, validation, recognition—they also don’t need to ask whether my pleasure was real.

To me, it’s telling that the longer I work, the more mad my skillz, the less I hear that question.

-SW1