What a day. Psychedelics have brought adventure back into my life.
I visited 2 hookers today. Not for sex. For conversation.
The first one was R$170/hr. The second, R$300. Before both of them, I tried to meet another girl, who was R$200. She forgot the meeting though, or so I believe – she actually proved she wasn't a scammer to me by revealing her real name + Instagram.
The latter I think is the most close to my wife when I met her. A slightly suggestive profile photo... no WhatsApp name or just initials... in university... working a shitty low paid job aside from her main income of sex work.
I'll find different names for all of them. R$170 – Maria – poor/cheap. R$200 – Juliana – uni student. R$300 – Amanda – professional.
I arrived first at the neighborhood Juliana is based in, to go to a restaurant. I'd contacted her at 12:30, confirming if she was coming, came over, no response, got lunch, ate it, and then she finally responded after I'd paid and was about to leave.
I had got a bit worried that she was catfishing me and there was a dude waiting to rob me outside so I deleted a bunch of messages and blocked her, before realizing I was a bit paranoid and unblocked her, just saying “have a nice life”. She responded apologizing for forgetting, and saying she had to go quickly to work at her uncle's lanchonete.
I then hit up the other GPs (garotas de programa) in the city I'm staying. The first one to respond was Maria. She had an hour available at 3pm – it was already 1:30 or so by then so it wasn't too bad to wait for longer. I came over and I was pretty nervous on the ride there. I didn't want to meet a girl in her own place... I was scared of getting robbed or murdered. But whatever, I would have to do it at some point, and I'd done similarly scary things before.
Maria
I arrived at her place, there was a big dog at her neighbors, and I was a little afraid that that was her house and I'd have to go into it. But no, her's was adjacent to a house that was getting some construction work done.
She looked different to her photos – older and more made up. Makes sense though. Turns out she's 21 not 19 but says she's a teenager cause the old men want to be with a “menininha”.
She initially didn't seem to believe I was only there for conversation. Maybe cause she was so used to acting. So used to her clients just coming over to fuck her. Well anyway. She began opening up and I became less reserved. I bullshitted a little bit, changing details of my life story and how sex work, consent, rape/assault, and the like had played a part in my life. I focused on the fact my ex gf had become a hooker and not that my current wife had been one too.
Maria began telling me her story, and goddamn... it was intense. Pregnant at 16, had a kid at 17. Tried living with the father, didn't work – he became mentally and emotionally abusive. Left him, worked a job with a shit salary (R$1500 a month – $15 a day), until the company she worked for stopped paying her.
No way to not starve / run out of nappies at that point, so she got into sex work by necessity. She hated it at the beginning, felt like trash, but kept doing it and adapted.
She wants to save up enough to be able to apply to be a public servant (extremely stable, and decently paying job in Brazil) or get a degree. For her the number is R$20.000, although she could probably do it with R$10-15.000.
I noticed she had what appears to be an Apple Watch and iPhone – Brazil is the most expensive country for those things. But I can't really judge her financial control of that. They could be gifts from a client, bought second hand (and therefore way less irresponsible/splurgy), or things she just feels the need to buy to convince herself she isn't a piece of trash whore. Not that I think that anybody can be a “piece of trash” – but I think if you do this work a lot, you probably could end up seeing yourself that way.
Anyway back to the story. She was saying she's working on her financial management skills. But that it's hard to save... she saves, and then her kid needs a surgery, or she'll wait for months untreated via Brazil's public health system (SUS). And she can't let her kid suffer.
She works fucking hard. Needs to have 4 clients a day to make the day worth anything, basically. She has never done the count of how many clients she needs a day in order to reach her income/savings goals. Probably because it's sickening to think about. She needs to pay R$70 a day to keep her profile up on the escort site she uses. A 30 minute session costs R$140, a 1 hour session R$170.
I teared up a bit during that hour. She's so strong. She has overcame a lot of shit. She loves her daughter so damn much. I am sure her daughter's life isn't ideal. A cheap creche can bring a lot of problems... can have low standards for who they hire, how the treat the kids. I'm sure sometimes she gets stressed and her kid feels guilty for existing. I am sure her kid will grow up in some way fucked up. But maybe not. Maybe her kid will grow up smarter and well rounded. Maybe she'll fucking love her mum for what she does for her every day. And break the chain of teen pregnancy passed from grandmother to mother to daughter.
Jesus now I understand so much better why B was so afraid of having kids. Why her grandma forced her onto the pill. This was the other reality she was staring at...
I left feeling sad but also grateful/privileged for my life, and for having had the opportunity to maybe relieve a little pressure in her day, and maybe even have offered real understanding/listening.
It was good to see how bad it could be. And also that even in a pretty bad situation, that most of the clients are respectful. Yeah one dude didn't shower. Yeah one dude got aggressive and kept fucking her in a painful position. But most of them at least are respectful. That surely just makes it merely sad/tiring/uncomfortable rather than hell.
Maybe not even sad after a certain point.
Ah one last side thought. She's 21. I am almost 24. Yet she seemed older than me... I guess kids will do that to you. You don't properly grow up til you have kids. She said about the same thing referring to her ex-husband / father of the child... that before the kid, she was all naive, “he's the love of my life!”, accepted him cheating on her at “football”... the kid grew her up fast.
Amanda
Arriving there I felt a lot more confident. But also intimidated. Her whatsapp photo was just a glamour shot of her bolted-on tits. I knew she would definitely be much more experienced than Maria.
It was a bit of a mission to get inside. She had an apartment... I needed to give my passport number to the doorman to get in. I didn't like that at all. But whatever, I didn't need to give my CPF at least, which is a lot more readily traceable to me in Brazil.
I came up, and I was again surprised – she was older than she looked. I expect this is a trend with garotas de programa. She clearly had a lot of cosmetic surgeries.
She also didn't seem to believe I was interested only in conversation. But probably because she's had a lot of shy/new guys that come in that end up happier if she just seduces them.
Anyway I just sat down in a corner chair while she got water and sat down on the bed. Then we began talking...
I got the sense throughout our conversation and still now that she doesn't completely listen. She has heard so much of the same things the same times that she just takes shortcuts. She has a script for the husband worried about cheating his wife. She has a script for the couple who are worried about being corno/corna.
But even with that, she has good insights.
She is confident too. Real confident. A proper actor. And she had some pretty good advice for me. To improve my self esteem. To hold onto my relationship with B for dear life – at least, our current sex life, which is pretty good most of the time. And to see the time I had sex with my boss for a promotion as what it was – very similar to her experience with a boss she admired who sexually took advantage of her – “ele me estupro com meu consenso”.
Ah yes, that was the main story. She was younger... working on an airline. An important businessman in Belo Horizonte hired her to work in his business. Began flirting with her... brought her into his business to work alongside his office. Then one day called her into his office and hugged her, rubbed his dick on her. He didn't come, so she left and sat back down. He called her back in, and she came... it's rape with consent. It sounds weird until you live it.
I was very similar. I admired my boss a lot. And I really wanted to do well at the company I was working for. He flirted with me but I just took it as “whatever he flirts with every young guy”. But he would only ever give me attention and by proxy mentoring, promotion opportunities, if I accepted and returned his attention. I let him touch me up, and eventually one day stayed at his house and hooked up with him.
I do feel like my situation is a little different because I'm straight. I have to repress my sexuality in order to do something like that. But maybe if I did it enough times I would become desensitized. And maybe I would feel equally fraudulent/sad/disgusted if I was to have sex with a woman who smelled bad or didn't turn me on.
As I've been writing this I've been listening to Gang of Youths. A really good pick. They are a bit mainstream now, which I suppose I don't like because I feel it makes them more impersonal and washed out, more bland by the way they accommodate to an ever increasing crowd – but they still have a lot of good points. Such as “the heart is a muscle and I want to make it strong” “i want to give myself completely to the moving and the strange” and the repeating themes of deciding whether to kill yourself or embrace life's absurdity.
Anyway...
Talking with her was good. By the end of the convo we had covered 3 main topics – cheating, the nature of sex work, and consent/rape. I opened up a lot to her. I'm not sure why. I kind of felt like she could take it. Or maybe that she would like to hear it. Don't know.
From talking to her I honestly do believe she is able to disassociate enough from sex in order to truly feel nothing fucking clients.
She did mention though... in a relationship, a girl will feel a “pain in the heart” doing sex work.
I come to see sex work now as being a little mechanical/forgettable, like masturbation. For me, wanking is just to get to an orgasm. I rarely ever do it to truly enjoy myself, especially now I've quit porn... it's just self pleasure, getting rid of pent up coomer energy. Sex is way way better. It's spiritual with my wife oftentimes, sometimes feels like time stops. I never think about wanking when having sex with my wife.
So maybe that's how she feels about all her clients, and maybe even hookups. Especially given that they're all former clients and hookups.
But even if not. The fact that it's possible to see it that way is nice. It's way too easy to get terrorises by thoughts of “what if she's thinking about other dudes while we're having sex?”
She recommended me two films:
– Bruna Surfistinha: about a girl who becomes a sex worker partially by choice, starts at lower-class brothels before moving to serve upper class clients – ended up marrying a client who left his former wife for her. Because he loved her apparently... regardless of his wife being a “saint.”
– Joao de Deus: Pastor and sex criminal.
I have come to the following conclusions:
As a client, you must play along with the illusion in order to have sex with a hooker. You must believe she truly wants you. That she's a nymphomaniac. If you start thinking “she wouldn't fuck me if it wasn't for the money”, you'll probably begin feeling really shit.
- Your dick will help you do this – so will a little alcohol. Shit, I was sober and even I felt the pull of the illusion. I think the only thing that helped me was that I paid immediately on arrival. That way they knew they didn't have to get anything “out of me”.
- Even the most respectful/ethical/nicest client I know of is under the impression that every girl he pays for sex would probably have sex with him in a real world situation. Although he admits he doesn't know at least.
Cash is fucking important. Many girls have been harassed because they gave clients PIX addresses, and when you make a PIX payment, you see the real name of the person you're paying to. Maria and the girls she works with had to create a business just to accept payments without fear of harassment.
Maria felt bad about fucking men who have wives or children at home. Amanda has just grown to accept it and saw sex work as a solution to broken marriages. Get the sexual release without destroying the marriage. When I talked to B about this, she said she never let herself feel guilty because it was his fault for seeking her out and if she didn't fuck him another girl would.
It is difficult but possible to have sex for money and mentally adapt. You just begin to disassociate feeling from sex. This doesn't mean you can't bring feeling back into your sex life. It just means that you can adapt to a mechanical way of using your body without feeling like trash.
I am fucking happy that at the end of the day I don't have to work in this industry. Neither my wife. That if she lost her job or stopped working, we can actually live off my income and have a decent life. That I have so many job opportunities. I really have it all. I have stability and opportunity. So much fucking happiness and light in my life compared to these girls.
I also really feel like I understand B's life a lot more. And myself. Thank god I listened to myself on this. Thank god I faced the shadow.