Social Scripts in Escorting

(This image is made with gpt 4o excuse it’s misspellings, it’s but still a baby)

This was first published in Ai News but was edited down in a way to make it “more mainstream,” this is the raw original version.

One of the things that shocked me when I first got into this profession was how little the clients flirted with me; an Escort paid 3000 dollars an hour to spend the night in the bed of Fortune 500 CEOs. There’s a confidence you see in a man who knows they already have you, who knows that no matter what he does or says, you’re his. There’s a certain confidence I see in men that I don’t think other women get to see, one that I feel privileged to see.

It’s allowed me to see my clients as someone they’ve known for a long time, often to a completely unorthodox level – unshielded to a stranger – manifesting in details they would never tell their closest friends or wives, treating me as they would an old friend, or letting me know what they don’t like about themselves, about sex, about dates.

It’s about breaking the social scripts. What is the social script for? I've been found down a rabbit hole online with a mystery face, and now we’re here dissembling it in reality. This industry gives a novel, sometimes strange opportunity to meet when otherwise merely strangers. You find each other in ways that you would’ve never otherwise—an introduction by sending a strange email to a stranger online that you’ve already seen naked. 

I spent about a year researching how escorting worked before I started. I liked that I could read a play-by-play online on how the date extends into the evening, how to enter, when they take off their shoes, where they sit, where I sit, where they put the envelope, and what topics were allowed, and what topics weren’t. As an Autistic woman, it felt like I was finally looking at a handbook that everyone had already read but me. 

I tried to find a name and explanation for the intimacy I found. I called it zero-trust proofs, a term in cryptography that doesn’t hold a perfect analog. Where one party – the prover – can prove to another party – the verifier – that they know a certain piece of information without actually revealing the information itself. This allows the verifier to trust that the prover has the information without the prover having to share it. You’re simultaneously minimizing the exposure of sensitive information in an anonymous environment while building trust in the other party’s authenticity. What is held back keeps your identity secure while allowing the other to feel secure in it too. 

Usually, in social dynamics, we assess how we should interact with someone based on the groups we’ve clustered them into and what identities we project on them. As an escort, I hold legal information that perhaps no other strangers know, but on a social screening level, I hold nothing in how we usually assess other humans (by their social groups, family, religion, etc.). Another way of framing the intimacy that emerges from this is as contextual strangers, like Strangers on a Plane, a context-dependent willingness to divulge sensitive information.

However, I think it’s more than that. You’re meeting someone in an enclosed box where no matter what you say, however painful or non-painful or intimate or close or weird it will be, you don’t have to impress the other in the way we normally approach dating. If I slept with them, I could disregard so many of the social capital considerations women are consciously or unconsciously weighing to assess their sexuality. I enjoy that escorting gives me the ability to turn off something in my brain that is always running, a biological intelligence that gets in the way of a modern horny brain. Often, it feels like a pre-ordained fate that I didn’t know I wanted till I was in the room, in the bed, naked.

I said I could turn any man into the most confident man in the world. I love that I can see sides of people they would hide if they were trying to ensure their words or actions achieve some goal. Tell me the weirdest thing about yourself, and I'll love it; people's words change when not tied to intent or reputation. Often, if you look at language, there are three levels: context, emotion, and intent. Context is usually stable but influenced by both; the emotional level is often unconscious, and intent drives the status part of the language. It determines whether we’re trying to put our language above or below someone, being proud or humble, whether we’re trying to hide facts, or whether we’re trying to aggrandize. When the desire to covertly achieve some goal is removed, language becomes something without as much intent and instead operates in a flow state.

Often we hold much higher standards for partners we love than we do for family or friends. When relationships end, it’s not because two people have always hated each other. Two people who deeply love each other have come to a point where they can not forgive and change for each other. Ironically in places like couples therapy, it’s so difficult to forgive a partner not because we hate them but because we hold the highest of standards for their behaviour. They are the person who becomes our bookkeeper, childrearer, and friend, between shared bank accounts, chores, and calendars.

I become one role in their life, a love story. Relinquished from expectations to be an “everything.” Instead, I get to have the parts of someone when they step away from their responsibilities. We are completely present for each other. I am forever grateful that I get to have relationships with people, albeit via an unconventional introduction, where romance and passion are maintained in their best form.

Relationships with partners we love are often the hardest because you’ve idealized them in your mind, and you’ve set them up to compete against divinity. Perfection, you’d only have someone you love held to; when there are no expectations, you process people as they are. I think I often get to see people as they really are. 

I get paid to undress, but my real charge is to bare my soul.