As long as a client is not outright abusive or uniquely difficult, the moments after finishing a booking where I hold the money in my hands are an immense high for me. The novelty of earning a day’s wages at another job in the space of an hour never fully wears off. The extent of my excitement when I have finished a booking will vary depending on what volume of clients I’m seeing and how much I’m charging and how worried I was about money beforehand, but even after many years selling sex I’m still amazed that I can use my body to provide sexual services and earn so much money in a short space of time.
We all tend to dwell more on the bad experiences we have than the good ones, so when I’m asked about the emotions invoked in me by selling sex I’m more likely to think of the fear or nervousness about new clients or to remember times I’ve felt disgusted or just bored. In reality, I’ve probably experienced the post-client high just as much as those feelings.
Even calling it a “high” is going to be divisive, because so many people who speak against prostitution will argue that sex workers are addicted to selling sex and throw the same stigma at us that they do at drug users. Selling sex is pathologized as a risky sexual behaviour that we engage in on impulse, for the fun chemical reaction in our brain, whether that’s supposed to come from the sex itself or from the thrill of holding the money after. When we sell sex and also use drugs, we have no hope of our autonomy being respected, and sex work abolitionists will argue that what’s best for us is a detox of it all.
What I mean when I refer to the feeling I get after seeing clients as a high is that there’s an adrenaline rush and a relief and an excitement all wrapped into one. No matter how many times I do it, I continue to find it hard to believe I was really able to make so much money in such little time. I look at the money and I think of minimum wage jobs I’ve worked when I’ve made less money after a full shift, after which my legs ached desperately or I’d been yelled at by a manager who seemed to have made it their mission to demoralize me, and I want to laugh at the fact I can do this instead.
I’ve sobbed in relief after getting the money in my hands, because I knew I could eat that week, and I’ve coasted on the high of the payment from client to client until I completed a day at the brothel. Sometimes a client will orgasm after a handjob lasting only a moment and I can’t hold back the grin when I count the cash he gave me for it, elated. Other times I cling to the wisps of the feeling I would usually get over the notes in my hand, when the client has been inconsiderate and I’ve dissociated and counted to a hundred over and over while looking at the ceiling.
I think the physical presence of the cash has an impact on my post-client high. There have been times I’ve been paid through a bank transfer (not advised for anonymity) or that I’ve traded sex for something, and it’s harder to keep the payment in mind. I focus more on things I disliked about the booking and I become more calculating about how many clients I still need to see to earn my rent for the month. With cash in my bag or the inside pocket of my jacket as I travel home from an outcall, I’m constantly aware of it, and my mind is less likely to drift to my frustrations. On days I used to see multiple clients at home, I’d sneak to my hiding place and flip through the £20 and £10 notes there to gain courage.
Selling sex is worth the money to me; if it weren’t, I wouldn’t do it. That doesn’t mean that the high of having the money in my hands is always a balm to suffering I might face. I mostly feel it when things are good, when I feel like I’ve been paid for very little work because I’ve had an easy client, and the times when a client harms me it suddenly brings me back to the earth. On the occasions where the money does not feel like it was worth it for a specific encounter, because I was assaulted or mistreated, I have a visceral reminder that my rate accounts for the risk of the work and not just the time or difficulty of each booking.
Some amount of the enjoyment of a bundle of notes in my hands is a remnant of my time while homeless or freshly housed when I was desperate for any way to afford food and money sex work felt like a miracle, some of it comes from the displays of wealth in media through flashing cash that have wormed their way into my psyche, but no matter the cause I’m glad I don’t ever take it for granted. I never look at the money from a client and treat it as trivial.
The sex part of sex work fascinates so many people. Sex is just the means to this end for many of us, and selling it is one of many things we do when we need cash. Might as well get that exhilaration, that post-client high, to tide us over until the next one.
Jack Talks About Sex Work 