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The other side of the booking
The longer time I spend online, the more I realize not a single thought of mine has ever been an original experience. I mean that kindly.
I'd been turning over the idea of booking a male escort for a few months now. Circling it but never quite stepping toward it. Then, a few weeks ago while I was doomscrolling on Instagram, I landed on a post by a UK-based escort. The title alone stopped my thumb: I Booked a Male Escort. My heart skipped a beat. That evening I went straight home, poured a glass of wine, and folded myself into the couch to read.
It was beautifully written. Raw in the way only true things are. By the time I finished, I'd already decided. Something on my list was finally getting scratched off.
You'll find her piece below, and I mean this for clients as much as for the women reading. It's worth your time.
I let her words settle, then opened my laptop, already half-smiling at my own boldness. Unfortunately, the smile didn't last. The offer, it turns out, is nowhere near as abundant as ours, female providers, and the little that does exist, mostly looks like something you'd want to close the tab on immediately. It made me appreciate all the effort all of us women do and how much invisible labor goes into being ‘findable’. The directories, the websites, the constant feeding of social media. We hand clients a straight line. This was more of a treasure hunt, and not the fun kind.
Eventually I swallowed my pride and opened a website I've spent years quietly despising. I set up my criteria and there he was. Dave. Late forties. Silverfox. A body that looks like it’s been sculpted by hand. A website with actual sentences in it. A few reviews, a social presence. Just enough to make him feel like a real person.
The more I read, the more nervous I became, nervous enough to nearly close the laptop and call it a night for good. I know first-time nerves and I wrote about it on "The Elevator" but this was a different register entirely. For the first time, I was standing on the other side of the transaction. I finally understood what it is a client feels in the moment before they hit send. It was well over midnight when I did it anyway. Email sent. No taking it back now.
Dave replied the next day. We settled on a date, a time, a place and just like that, there really was no way back. The days before were strange in a way I didn't expect. The night before, I even dreamed I never showed up.
Once the date was set, the second-guessing crept in. "What am I doing? What if he judged my reasons for being here ?" Being on the other side of the booking made me strangely self-conscious in a way four years of this work never had. It's hard not to wonder if I am doing this right. Will he think less of me for wanting this? Even when I know damn well, from my own side of the desk, that good providers aren't sitting there quietly critiquing their clients. Knowing it and feeling it, it turns out are two very different things.
In the days before, I spent an unreasonable amount of time deciding as who I'd be walking into that date. I'd already settled on one thing: I wouldn't tell him I did this too. I wanted to live fully inside the client role, just for a few hours. But his website had made one thing obvious: communication mattered to him, deeply and I knew that meant questions. Real ones. And I am, unfortunately, a catastrophic liar.
Thirty minutes into the date I fumbled. Some sentence came out sideways and there it was: I'm a worker too. He laughed.
Dave looks like he walked out of a Calvin Klein campaign. Tall, sun-kissed skin, a body clearly not left to chance, blue eyes and a face that puts you at ease before he's said a word. We met in the hotel lobby, and on the way up I caught myself staring at him a bit too long and thinking: Girl, just say something. This is getting awkward. Before I managed to, he said something first. I can’t remember what he said. I only remember that from that point on, talking to him took no effort at all. The man can hold a conversation.
Four years of being on the receiving end of dates and welcomes teaches you things, and I wanted to give him the same care so many clients have given me. Not some cramped, twenty-five square meters with nowhere to move and nothing to do but collide into intimacy because of lack of space. A proper suite, then. I arrived early to get the AC running against a heatwave that refuses to end, set out champagne on ice, something to nibble, strawberries because strawberries are always right. And the envelope left in plain sight, so nothing would need to be said about it later.
He poured the champagne and sat across from me, and for a while we just talked. He told me how he'd gotten into this work, what keeps him in it and it was obvious, listening to him, that this wasn't a role he was playing. He meant it and was very passionate about it. We drifted through easy conversation until he got up and asked if he could sit beside me instead. I nodded.
Closer, I caught the low note of his cologne. His eyes held mine as he leaned in and asked, quietly, if he could kiss me. I nodded again.
We talked about what I liked, what I didn't, in a way that makes you realize how rarely anyone actually asks. Then he asked if he could give me a massage and we moved to the bedroom where he undressed me and began, slow and deliberate, working his way over my body. He watched. Not just touched. Watched the way you'd watch for a reaction you intend to find, adjusting pressure and pace until he found exactly the place that undid me.
He kept talking to me the entire time, checking in, asking what felt good and what didn't, and it turns out that's the whole secret. Not some innate gift. Just a man who never stopped listening, even with his hands full.
He was in every sense, generously made - wink - and knew precisely what to do with it. There was nothing rushed about him. He seemed to have all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it until I genuinely couldn't take any more and even then he made sure I felt cherished on the way down from it. Hours passed. Several more of me did too. When I noticed the time, I told him he should go. We hugged goodbye at the door, and I fell asleep still wrapped in the memory of it.
Looking back now, what stays with me most isn't even the obvious part. It's the exchanges. The compliments, given freely and often. The sounds. His, mine, unguarded, the kind you can't fake even if you tried, and neither of us did. Not once, at any point in that evening, did I wonder if he meant it. If some part of him was simply performing the role I was paying for. It never crossed my mind. That's the part I keep returning to. Because I know, from the other side of this exact exchange, how much effort it takes to make someone feel that certain. And I know how easily some people dismiss what we do as lesser than "real" intimacy, as if a transaction and a genuine feeling can't coexist in the same room.
They can. I lived it, from the other chair this time, and it changed something in how I understand my own work. What we give the people who find the courage to knock on our doors, our inboxes. It’s not a performance of closeness. It's closeness. Beautiful, real, and worth every bit of the respect it rarely gets.
Moral of the story: Go book a provider, male or female. It might change your life. And for those curious about Dave, you can find him here.
