What’s your body count?

If you’ve never sold sex then there’s probably a good chance that you know the answer to the question, what’s your body count? When strangers pay to use your body, it quickly feels like that body is not your own. When that happens it’s better not to know the number. To escape the reality of it.

I’ve not sold sex for a number of years and since I stopped, I’ve been practicing meditation and mindfulness. Something that was much more difficult to do when my days were filled with strange men and my body was engaging in the acts I put it through.

I feel sad when I think of how many men have been intimate with me. How many times my body said no but I made it do it anyway. The way I’d take more extreme abuse from the worst kind of men because otherwise they’d complain about me the way they complained about the others. They’d talk about my body in the most degrading way with the other women I’d have to see every week. So I’d play the game, I’d be the anything goes girl, the kinky one, the yes you can strangle me one. I’d do it all even when my body was screaming that this was making me hate myself even more. The adrenaline I’d feel when it was all over kept me going as if I was taking part in some extreme sport.

I’d spend a full working day seeing those men, one after the other. They didn’t care, as long as they didn’t bump into each other on the way out. There was one regular who came to see me quite often and always at the end of the day. The first thing he’d ask was how many men I’d seen that day. I’d always say a high number even if it had been quiet, because that’s what he wanted to hear. For most men I don’t think they really want a whore in the bedroom, because whores have sex with a lot of men and that’s a dent to the ego. When they say they want a whore, they mean a woman with no choice.

I do have choice now, I choose who I am intimate with and how and I am lucky to have a partner who understands that prostitution has had a lasting impact. There are still times when my body doesn’t fully feel like it belongs to me. It shuts down sometimes because it doesn’t want to remember some of things that have happened to it.

I refuse to hurt it now or let anyone else hurt it. I wasn’t ‘offering a service’ as people so often say when they talk about prostitution. I was offering a sacrifice and I was it. It’s not a service when you have to shut your whole self off to offer it and when you still have nightmares years later about those extras you just had to provide.

I have no idea what my body count is and I wouldn’t even like to guess. All I know is that my body is now mine and it will always stay that way.

First published: 21 October 2024

Jenna