Sometimes I think about stopping escorting. Most of the time, I’m never considering doing so soon, but I imagine doing so once I have enough money for the next thing, or I think about finding a better paid job where I have enough income not to need it. The issue is, barring becoming suddenly rich via some miracle, even when things are good it would take very little for me to turn to selling sex.
Selling sex comes naturally to me at this point, and is a way for me to earn a significant amount of money very quickly. With a stable income that allowed me to cover my needs and have extra, there would still be large expenses I’d need to save for that would periodically arise. I’ll want to save for top surgery, or a car, or a deposit on a mortgage, or a new gaming system – all of these things can be achieved faster if I also sell sex.
My mind does not see sex work as a last resort anymore, I simply view it as a part of my life. When I have a job which can pay me bills and I am not seeing many clients, I still know that I have the ability to quit at any time and live off of sex work. Where other working class people would tolerate a great number of negatives from their job, including mistreatment, I know that I can quit my job and still survive. That makes me more likely to do so, and to use full-time sex work to manage until I find a new vanilla job.
If I am always going to use sex work when I am between jobs, or when I need to save up for something and sex work would allow me to do so faster, or even just when I want some extra cash rather than money directly into my bank… how am I ever going to “exit”? Telling myself that I’m done will never be a hard line, because there will always be something else I want money to obtain, and I am unlikely to ever have enough money that I can purchase those things whenever I want them.
I can imagine a future where I do sex work much less often. I can’t imagine one where I stop entirely, even if the work I do moved mostly online and I took clients in person on only rare occasions.
Sometimes this upsets me. I don’t enjoy seeing clients. Most johns I have, I feel uncomfortable around because I’m navigating their sexual desires and putting on a persona to pretend to enjoy it, whilst also being vigilant in case of violence. The idea of never doing that again is seductive to me. The frequency with which I am assaulted whilst working would stop, and I would no longer have to lie on forms or to people around me about my current actions.
At other times, I’m glad that I have the option here for me to take. Without it, I’d be reliant on jobs I hate that barely pay me enough to live, with no way to earn more. Outside of sex work, I don’t have many skills that I could use to earn money on a self-employed basis, and none of them could earn me money so quickly without large start-up costs.
Being a sex worker has started to feel like a part of my identity, in a similar way to my gender identity and sexuality. My sexuality is still queer, even if I’m not dating or sleeping with anyone at the time, and I am still a sex worker and have the mindset even when I haven’t seen a client in a while.
All of this means that I do not see myself leaving, even though I would love to definitively quit and decouple my relationship with sex from my finances. Relying on a partner for resources would feel like another form of sex work to me, and I do not want to feel like there is any financial element to why I remain in a genuine romantic relationship with someone, so relying on another person would also not resolve the issue. Sex work is a route to financial security for me, and any other method of obtaining it would require other sacrifices.
My material and social conditions need to change, substantially, for me to stop doing sex work. It doesn’t feel like a decision I’m making any more, but something that it would take me a lot of work to stop. Until it becomes worth stopping, I’m not going to. I need the money too much.
Jack Talks About Sex Work 