I couldn’t have imagined that a few orgasms would be our breaking point. My Hinge profile was clear about what I did for work and if anything he initially fell in the fetishisation camp. The interrogations were always severe, the questions often too obscure to answer. “But did you like it?” he would repeat.
I mean, in context, sure. But was it genuine pleasure? I don’t know. “What’s genuine pleasure and why does it matter?” I'd reply, sweating like the proverbial whore in church. It was a year into our relationship and I loved him and I wanted to make him happy. People pleaser (classic hooker). “Be honest, I won’t be hurt by the answer, I just wanna know if you liked it”. He always stressed he didn’t care either way but the tension in his jaw betrayed him. His eyes screamed, “Please say you merely endured it, that every orgasm you had at the brothel was a regrettable bodily reaction”. Who knew that something as private and fleeting as an orgasm could dissolve a man’s already scarce tolerance for a woman’s having-been a hooker.
Movies tell audiences that we hate our job because it’s easier to swallow. We only continue the nightly exchange of sex for money in fear of our pimp striking or raping us! To enjoy our work would call into question the sex we have in our private lives. The civilian’s fear, driven by ego and insecurity. They hate to imagine that their sex exists within the same category as our work sex, with the same criteria for good and bad. But the hooker-girlfriend lays bare the contractual nature of all sex and forces him to evaluate his, a terrifying task for an insecure man. What abject horror have I caused him for enjoying an orgasm, on-the-clock and post-payment? My remunerated cum, that foul monster threatening to fracture his sense of self! Reiterating my dichotomised self to him and others is integral to maintaining their tolerance of me. Pleasure cannot be bought, they reassure themselves, lest a client ever fuck better than them.
I never thought to ask whether he enjoys making music professionally as much as he does the music he makes in private. If I had asked he’d have responded that he does, I’m sure, but would add that his intention in asking me was not to cast judgment. But the potential for condemnation had already been implied. And of course he gains satisfaction from his work, mine is the only industry where the pleasure dilemma exists. The musician is allowed, expected, to derive pleasure from their work. Pitiful is the artist who merely tolerates any part of their process. But how dare they! Enjoy that for which they are paid! As if receipt of payment could ever possibly devalue an act? I’m not a musician so I don’t know the appropriate analogy to make, a musical orgasm or whatever, but I would hope that he does experience them in his career. I hope everyone can find work they genuinely enjoy or at the very least can find brief moments of ecstasy within.
And yeah, fuck it, I did like it. I’ve been lucky, I’ve never had a pimp or any coercive force, be it debt or poverty, driving me to the brothel every evening. The worst thing I’ve ever had to endure as a sex worker is the relentless questioning motivated by everybody else’s sexual anxieties. Indeed the horror of choosing my work is too much for some. It didn’t matter that I enjoyed the orgasms he gave me more. “Enjoy this, not that”. But I’m not in the business of making my cum more palatable to others. Please sit, unnerved by my pleasure, and know that I like it.