After Isabella, my cherry having been popped, I continued my descent. (The end of the story, and its summary, can be found here, here and here – I repeat this in every post because it’s important to me that no one read just a part of this story without having at least been referred to the place where I re-gained perspective, where I found sanity.)
Anyway – my descent: Back in early 2005 – that’s when this was, I think – CraigsList still functioned as a useful way of matching customers/clients with sex workers and, even more than that, with people who were interested in trying sex work, whether for a thrill, or to help make the rent. I don’t remember exactly what my first post said – something like, “Horny guy seeks college girl for oral.” I got no responses. I worked on refining my ad, trying to distinguish myself: “Everything else on this board is awful. I’m not like those other guys. And you’re probably not like the other women.” And eventually – eventually – it started to work. I started hearing from women. Of course, most of them were straight-up sex workers, prostitutes, people who made their living this way.
But some weren’t. There were college girls, grad students, young professionals. And the way it went was usually this: a little e-mail back and forth, photos exchanged (rarely of me; always of them), maybe a brief phone conversation on my secret Google Voice number (actually, it was Grand Central, before Google bought and rebranded them). And then, we’d meet. Either on the street, at a cafe or bar, or near a hotel. I didn’t know from hourly hotels at this point, and squandered untold resources on expensive overnight stays in hotels I used for two or three hours.
I used the e-mail exchange beforehand to sensitize these women to my unique… requirements. And as this period proceeded, I learned with greater and greater specificity what those requirements were. At the beginning, I simply wanted to lie still for an hour or three while an indefatigable, beautiful, possibly nude (but probably not) woman fellated me. Eagerly. Enthusiastically. By the end, I had (d)evolved into the much more sexually self-aware and catholic guy that I am. These women – and there were many – introduced me to the reality of submissiveness, to the pleasures available to one who thought creatively. Money provided the protection I needed from the possibility of rejection: not that I was never rejected – in fact, not that I wasn’t rejected constantly. The vast majority of women I encountered had no appetite for giving me a two- or three-hour blowjob, for dressing as I requested (which I started to do), for masturbating for my pleasure.
But every so often, I’d meet a woman with whom I was a good fit – a woman who either was prepared to do a lot of acting for her money or who really, genuinely enjoyed what I had to offer sexually (and not just financially). There was some variety within this population, of course. There were a few who weren’t especially enthusiastic but whose looks and/or technique kept me coming back for more; there were a few whose looks and/or technique weren’t so great, but damn, were they enthusiastic. And so on….
And with these women, and with those I saw in the massage parlors, I did something that many people take for granted, but that, tragically, had never been a part of my life: I talked, openly, joyously about sex. I discovered that I wasn’t a freak (or rather, that the ways in which I’m a freak actually aren’t that freakish, or rather, that everyone’s a freak…). I discovered that there are women who want to give me what I want to take. (My wife couldn’t possibly give me what I wanted in this era, because I couldn’t ask her. This is no fault, no shame of hers. Just in case you were wondering.)
The point is, though, that I had this ersatz romantic life with women I paid. Women I met in massage parlors, through CraigsList, initially, but then also Seeking Arrangement (which was more successful for me over the years) and, occasionally, through women I’d been seeing. (I tried Ashley Madison – see my thoughts on them here – and Adult Friend Finder and, ultimately, Fet Life, too, but never to any avail.) There was, for example, a chain of women that began with an unbelievably hot college junior who introduced me to a friend of hers who danced at an underground lap dance club in New York (Lou’s – it ultimately got busted), who, in turn introduced me to three or four of her friends – all women who did a little sex work – usually in massage parlors – but for whom this sort of encounter was, if not unprecedented, at least a relatively small part of their lives. (And I introduced two of them to one of the massage parlors – “Sacred Beauty,” described in this post.)
There was a several-year period where I maintained a stable of these women – beautiful, mostly younger, women with prodigious sexual appetites who would happily, enthusiastically indulge my increasingly adventurous desires. I would have them meet me for drinks in bars, do all the things I describe in the “Instructions” on this blog that I now/still get off on doing with women, only now I do it with women who are with me consensually, for free, simply because they want to be.
It was with these women whom I paid, for whom I lied to my wife, played hookie from my work, absented myself from my child – it was with them that I learned who I am sexually.
I can beat myself up endlessly, regret all the harm I caused others and myself. And I do.
But the truth is (or, as Mark Halperin would say, “and/but”), a lot of fucking good came out of all that too. Not that there wouldn’t/couldn’t have been better/less heinous ways of “discovering myself” sexually. But this is the path I took.
Interesting Article!