If I’m honest, in my moments of greatest pain, loneliness, rejection, perceived abandonment, what I want more than anything isn’t sex. No, it’s sex with someone I’m paying. This was true before I reined in my out-of-control behavior, and it’s true since.

I’d rather dial a familiar number and see a woman I’m paying to rub my cock for half an hour or an hour than have a genuine human sexual connection with a woman (any woman) I know, with whom I have consensual sex.

Why is that? What the fuck is that about?

This is in the category of wacky mysteries of the human mind (my human mind) that are almost impossible to fathom.

It must be (whether I like it or not) that all of the aspects of paid sex, and in particular, those that differ from other forms of sex that may be available in moments of my distress, must, axiomatically, be what I’m seeking. (This sentence, this premise, that I/we want all aspects of an experience we repeat over and over is central to me, but really really hard to accept.)

In that insight is the possibility of exploration, learning: just how is it different? Well, for one, there are all the negative feelings I (get to) have, about which more in the next paragraph. But what else? Well, there’s the utter certainty about the basic trajectory of the encounter, and utter protection from the possibility that anyone might want anything of me. There’s the fact of the money. There’s the structural clarity that she’s working for me, that she’s there to please me, that her pleasure is incidental, coincidental, unnecessary. And, of course, there’s the really long and focused attention to my cock by a woman. By a woman to whom I owe nothing other than basic politeness/respect (and money).

And the feelings: when I pay for sex, I feel dirty, pathetic, undesirable, sad, weak, lonely, isolated, embarrassed, ashamed. When I would enter a massage parlor, one I’d dialed on the spur of the moment, in a moment of pain, I would have the following set of thoughts:

- I hope I see someone who genuinely enjoys herself, who genuinely enjoys me.
- I hope I see someone who has a really good, satisfying way of touching me.
- Shit, I can’t believe I”m doing this again. I don’t want to do this, don’t want to be here.

In other words, more than anything, I’m ambivalent about it.

So to ponder…. this seems to be what I crave in my moments of greatest emotional pain. I want to escape the pain I feel, and retreat into this bundle of ambivalence.