When the seed was planted in my head, a mere curiosity got buried in the back of my mind. The mid-20s stay-at-home mom whose only understanding of relationship & intimacy was to tether yourself to one person forever because that was what you vowed to do before some imagined force named God, irrespective of how terrible they made you feel or treated you. As I read “In the Company of the Courtesan” by Sarah Dunant, wearing a mumu dress I found in the racks of a local Goodwill, I wondered, “What would that be like? What would it feel like to be wanted, desired, treasured, and provided for? Offered money and gifts in exchange for your presence and beauty and body?”
I longed to feel desired. At the time, my husband would barely acknowledge me in the room when he was home. In the few and far between moments, he cared for our very young children so that I could have alone time at the grocery store. I meticulously counted each penny in my basket with a small notepad and pencil. In case I needed to erase something.
It was then that a seed was planted.
After we divorced and then separated, I started dating and having sex again. I hadn’t had sex but a handful of times in my 20s. I had more sex as a teenager! I actually had a lot of sex as a teenager because I’ve always been a slut. I was not new to the world responding to me as a sexual creature. I was a girl raised in our culture with men making comments, whether they were inappropriate or ones coming from a place of admiration, which made it feel different. Still, from a young age, I noticed the effect I could have on people by walking through a room. Not only with how I looked but how I behaved. How I spoke. How I felt. I could put my attention on someone and let them consume me.
As I started to date for the first time as an adult, I WAS STARVING. RAVENOUS. For touch. For attention. For kisses. To be held and cherished and loved. I started to learn about other options for being in relationships. Different options for sex. Polyamory. BDSM. Orgasmic Meditation. Tantra. Sex Magic. AND I WANTED IT ALL. How did this body work? How could I learn to have otherworldly orgasms that I’ve heard are possible? I met people who were open-minded, intelligent, sensual, and magical. Explorative.
As I went head first into a journey of sexual exploration, I also found myself in a position with 2 young children, no roof over our heads, and no real education or training for me to quickly find a job that could make me an affordable living; because, I had spent my 20s utterly devoted to being a stay at home mother who helped her husband with his business. I truly believed I was committed to that marriage for the rest of *his* life. He was older. Much, much older. During this time, I also started to awaken to the fact that he had been 55 when he met me. I was 19.
19!!!!! I have a 19-year-old now. I can’t imagine not doing everything possible to veer my child away from that dynamic. I can’t even imagine my child being in a position where that would be possible. But at that time, I was alone in a big world looking for something and had absolutely nobody to guide me. Naturally, I chose to be cared for and become a mother. In hindsight, choosing someone with some money would have been slightly better.
So there I was, now 29, faced with the need to make money, pursue a passion, AND not willing to settle for less anymore. Then somebody said, “I have a friend you should meet. You remind me of her. She’s been an escort for 15 years.”
And so that tiny seed in the back of my head, buried deep in the soil of my mind, was watered.
