Diary of an Escort: Why I Write

There is one sentence I hear in this profession more often than any other, and it usually comes around three in the morning, when the hotel room is dark and the formalities of the evening were shed long ago: That is not how I imagined it. It is never meant as a complaint. Every time, it sounds like a confession — as if the man next to me had only just noticed that behind the word escort there is a person, not a picture.

I am writing here precisely because of that sentence. Not to explain the profession — there are guides for that, and the agency writes its own. But because the one thing nobody in this trade ever writes about is the only thing that is actually true: the before, the after, the in-between. The taxi ride at two in the morning through a sleeping city. The enquiry where I know by the second sentence that nothing will come of it. The moment in front of a strange hotel door when I pause, every single time, even though I know what awaits me.

I know both pictures outsiders paint all too well. One is the picture of quick, sad money. The other is champagne and penthouses, an Instagram life with better lighting. Both contain a grain of truth and are otherwise made of projection. Reality is less dramatic and stranger: it consists of long weeks in which nothing happens, and of single evenings so dense that I carry them with me for weeks. It consists of choice — my choice. Nobody who takes this profession seriously is on call. You say no more often than yes, and every no is the price for a yes meaning something.

Nobody who takes this profession seriously is on call. You say no more often than yes.

I have given this diary a few rules, and they are not negotiable. There will be no names — not even one for me. There will be no exact dates, only months, and everything I tell happened longer ago than it sounds. There will be no hotels mentioned by name, no restaurants, no view from any balcony, because a photo of a place reveals more than any text. And there will be no evenings anyone could recognise. What is written here is condensed: several evenings become one observation, several thoughts become one entry. Everything is true, but nothing is on record.

Perhaps it is not even one woman writing here. Perhaps we are several, and I deliberately leave that open, because the uncertainty is part of the protection. The voice will stay the same. That is all I promise.

What is to come: the rejection I voiced and that felt right. The evening on which nothing happened and that was not bad for it. The hour before the first knock, about which nobody has ever said a word. And eventually the booking I almost declined — the one that taught me how little I sometimes know about the people who write to me. Irregular, every few weeks, unannounced. Like everything in this profession: if it required appointments, it would not be a diary.