Sometimes Sugaring Is So Damn Tiring
By Margot St. Vincent
The emotional labor required to tend to men and their struggles has me working more hours than I’m actually getting paid for.
Being a hooker is rarely anything like Pretty Woman, even though I’ve definitely had the fantasy client who took me shopping for clothes (sans shoulder pads). In fact, being a hooker is rarely like anything you see on television, or in movie theaters, or read about.
The only time I can remember seeing something even remotely similar to my own experience of sex work was in 2007, when I went to see Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (which is a fabulously depressing Philip Seymour Hoffman movie that I enjoy a good deal, but would never recommend for a first date, which I was on at the time). Marisa Tomei plays a somewhat tired-looking escort who has been working with several members of the same family for years. She’s upfront about her boundaries, but mostly, she’s deeply, deeply tired.
Talking about sex work is complicated in the way that talking about any kind of industry is complicated. I can only speak to my own experience, which is as a full-service, high-end worker, mostly in the sugaring but also in the escorting smorgasboard of the biz. So when I talk about what I’m…
