The Tamesis
Pay the price, part one
Guess this riddle for me. There are many things you can pay for that will help you get laid. You can pay for manicures and pedicures, waxing and sugaring, lipstick and mascara, spaghetti-strap bras and matching thongs. You can pay the club’s premium. You can spend money on a cocktail that will relax you and transform you from a chick who hates speaking in meetings to a chick who grinds her ass into strangers and sings songs, please don’t stop the music. You can pay for a membership to an app that, in theory, will introduce you to people you want to fuck. You can spend money on medications and devices that allow you to have sex without having children. If preventive measures fail, you can pay for medications and surgery to terminate the pregnancy. If you want to have a baby, or have no other choice, you can pay for childcare. In the United States, you can and will pay for the health care you need during pregnancy, labor, and delivery. It goes on and on. Heck, you might end up paying for your child’s college degree. You can pay for everything surrounding intercourse, every spoke of the wheel, but you can’t pay for intercourse itself. You can’t pay the center fees.
Paying for sex is illegal, at least anecdotally, and that’s the number one reason most people give when asked why they don’t do it. But we do all sorts of illegal things. White petty crimes. We jaywalk, litter, and text while driving. We took pens from the office, used fake IDs to buy alcohol, and gave our friends Xanax when they were nervous about a flight.
Nearly 30% of men said they had paid for sex. I know several of them. They were very matter-of-fact about it. A few years ago, a friend was on holiday in Prague, happily wandering among the Gothic buildings and ocher rooftops, guzzling beer, pork knuckles, Kafka and cafés. He visited a club over the weekend. Amid the digital blast of EDM and the blaze of colored lasers, he started chatting with a woman. She told him she was a sex worker and had started working that night. His calculations were quick and effortless: I’m horny. She is working. let’s go. No hanging hands. No shame, no big deal. They left the club. She gave him the head. He paid her. They broke up for good.
But I don’t know of any woman who has ever given money in exchange for sex. Perhaps this is because there is no safety net with strangers, so spending an hour in a hotel room with one person, for example, can lead to a police report just as much as an orgasm. Maybe this is because women’s orgasms aren’t as guaranteed as men’s. Maybe it’s a demi-sexuality among the fair sex. Maybe it’s a coincidence. But I don’t think so.
I think the real reason women don’t pay for sex directly is because it’s unladylike, it’s just inappropriate, and most of us are still locked into the idea of being or looking like the right type of woman. We want to be normal. Paying directly for sex—the same way you would swipe a credit card at a nail salon—reveals inappropriate hunger and ambition. Desire for sexual intercourse; ability to have sex without any relationship gymnastics; willingness to use one’s money selfishly. We are taught to trade relationship work for sex, not money.
I considered paying for sex. It was with great trepidation that I thought about this at length, in great detail, and had heated debates between me and my girlfriend, me and my therapist, and Sturm und Drang. On the surface, this seems like a simple solution to a complex set of problems, one of which is simply, I want to have sex, but I don’t want to date. And yet, yet – I got beneath the surface, and the complications began to explode like popcorn, slowly at first, then like something that might spiral out of control. How can I find a sex worker? If a sex worker is a male, how can I guarantee that I will not be raped and killed?* What are the chances that a random sex worker would know about my particular path to orgasm? Will this experience permanently alter my dignity, staining me with dirty, shameful goo that I can never wipe away? Can I still enjoy sex in this situation? Or, dear God, can I enjoy it? morebolstered by a novel sense of agency and authority, free from the boring dictates of cis sexuality, free to let my pleasure be the focus of those hours? Anyway, can I admit what I did? To a friend, to my therapist, to a future partner? For my daughter, should she ask? In other words, can I really accept it, accept all the impacts and be ready (at least in theory) to face the externality?
Ironically, even though I was restless and clutching my pearls, I didn’t realize that I had already Pay for sex. I paid for it ancillary – for makeup, push-up bras, bikini waxes and cocktails. But I also paid quite a bit of money directly. There’s a guy, he’s hot as hell, hotter than the grease on a smoking frying pan, like hosteven my lesbian friends were smitten. Our attraction is palpable, strong, and deep. He has a job but no money. The money slipped through his fingers. He is such a child. So, that’s always been a treat for me. Drinks, Lyfts, food, tickets. I even gave him cash because he said he needed cash and I had extra money. Not long after—it seemed so soon—he ate me for the first time. The rain was falling, the wind was howling, “Beautiful and Essex” blared from the speakers, and I saw his painfully handsome face, nape to nape, the tacit ecstasy of orgasm. Our relationship progressed, he got a raise, and money matters were balanced. But I guess, at the end of the day, it was sex that I paid for. It’s not ideal – not because I’m completely turned off by the idea of being a sugar mommy, but because I don’t have endless liquid cash like that, and I’m sentimental at heart and prone to feelings after having enough sex. Still, I got the sexual release I wanted without having to wash his gym clothes or cook for him. At the end of the day, it’s worth it.
