This past weekend I visited a beloved client whom I hadn’t seen in more than six months. Before this hiatus, we spent one weekend a month together for a few years. Our weekends were on my calendar in such a predictable pattern that seeing him became part of the rhythm of my life. I saved stories for him and excitedly planned our adventures.
When he suddenly withdrew our visits six months ago, I didn’t know why. While reconnecting this weekend, he explained that our time apart was necessary because his feelings for me were becoming confused. Were we in a relationship, or was this a strictly professional arrangement? Was it both? Did it matter?
I’ve been doing this work for long enough to have gone through several iterations of this cycle. As an escort, it is not uncommon for my clients to become besotted with me, only later to become frustrated when they develop stronger feelings than what they think is possible within the boundaries of the provider/client relationship.
In An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work, Charlotte Shane talks about this dynamic, noting where things get messy: “I wanted clients to be enamored with me because I made more money and could sometimes get away with doing less when they were,” she says. “But to fall so in love that they needed to seriously discuss it with me was a sign of their descent into needy mistress mode — wanting more than was an offer, resenting what they were given. The relationship cracked under the pressure of their unrequired intensity, and one or both of us would eventually find it too miserable to continue.”
Reading those lines struck a chord deep within me. I, too, have been in perfectly wonderful ongoing relationships with clients that cracked under the pressure of emotional intensity too difficult to bind within the context of the session (whether unrequited or not). I still mourn the loss of one, in particular, often wishing I could go back in time to set better boundaries that would allow the relationship to continue.
And yet, a pattern isn’t a fait accompli. Last week I was sitting at a cigar bar with a lovely regular who plans work trips to Pittsburgh so that he can spend time with me. While smoking, drinking, and talking about life he looked at me and said, “You know I love you, don’t you?” I responded almost reflexively — certainly without thinking it through: “I do know; I love you too.”
This was not the first time he told me he loved me, but it was the first time I said it back. He commented, “You’re not supposed to say that!” He’s right, I am not supposed to say that, but we both knew that I had simply said aloud what we already knew to be true: the time we’ve spent together has fostered a deep emotional connection and mutual affection that can’t be so tidily wrapped in a transactional bow. It may be a transactional relationship, but we are, after all, human beings.
Is our relationship transactional? Sure. Would I be sitting in that bar with him were he not paying me to be there? Of course not. But does that mean that my words were a lie? Also, no. What it does mean is that were he not paying me to be there, I wouldn’t have the kind of life where I could spend my days sitting in cigar bars with men I wouldn’t otherwise encounter; I would be working an entirely different kind of job, living an entirely different kind of life. It also means that I would be less capable of integrating these relationships into my already complicated world.
The fact that our relationship is transactional is a feature, not a bug: it is the very condition for the possibility of the type of intimacy that can occur between providers and their special clients. Just because a relationship has bounds doesn’t mean that it’s fake. I can show up once a month with enthusiasm, energy, and excitement for the client that I started this piece with precisely because I have the rest of the month to attend to the other demands of my life. In answer to his original questions: These relationships are transactional; they can also be deeply meaningful.
We live in a culture that assumes that love only comes in very prescribed forms, particularly romantic and sexual love. And yet, I have been in this industry long enough to know that human beings are far more complex than this and there are many different ways to love and be loved. An envelope stuffed with Benjamins doesn’t preclude love, affection, and joy. Sometimes, it’s the very thing that makes it possible.
Jessie Sage is a Pittsburgh-based sex worker, writer, and the host of the podcast When We’re Not Hustling: Sex Workers Talking About Everything But.
You can find Jessie on her website or her socials: X: @sapiotextual & Instagram: @curvaceous_sage.
This article appears in Dec 4-10, 2024.
