By Jenna
When you hear the term ‘sex work’ what do you think of? Naughty Only Fans pics? Monotonous sex? Stag dos? Something that adventurous wild women do? Or maybe it’s just the natural order of things?
The reality is that it can be so much worse. I have sold sex in various places and one thing I learned was that prostitution is about more than sex. The term ‘sex work’ doesn’t come close to covering what is actually involved. When the door shuts and it’s two people in a room, all kinds of darkness permeate that space. It’s not just a sexual release for men who buy sex. Much deeper aspects of the psyche are explored.
I had men who would come to me to be racially abused. The sex parts of those interactions were secondary and didn’t physically involve me. On the other end of the scale, I had men who would book me and request that I pretend to be their sister while they had rough painful sex with me. Both of these extreme requests were damaging and affected me deeply. I had a few men who were very elderly and told me they didn’t have long left. They had very specific fetishes and always asked for the same experience. When they stopped visiting, I wondered if they had died.
A lot of the interactions I had with these men felt like re-living abuse. It has only been thanks to time that I have been able to reflect on my experience and really start to understand the amount of damage it caused. I went out of my way to please these men. I was never cold and distant. I put my energy into it, really made them feel like I loved my job. They all thought they were my favourite. That they were special. I would do so many extras. So wild. What I can now clearly see is that this wasn’t the wild woman in me. This was the child. The abused child who would do anything to make my abuser proud.
Every year that passes away from the sex industry provides me with more clarity and a stronger realisation that none of what I was involved in was what I really wanted. I have come to know myself better and the thought of being in those places again is no longer something I can stomach. ‘Sex work’ hurts and it takes a lot of time and work to heal.