I Wanted To Kill Myself

I have the usual sob story: usual beatings from my dad, his psychological torture, absence of the most beneficial parenting, severe neglect, first generation immigrant experience, raped by my cousin at age 12, social ostracism, extremely repressive Christian environment and the list goes on. Consequently, I grew up being alone, which perpetuates that state, and recently I live with an anxiety disorder that is sometimes debilitating.

By age 29, I became extremely frustrated about my virginity, and decided to finally to visit an SP. I was in Amsterdam. At first, in the oversized Jacuzzi, she caressed my body with hers. This was the first time I touched a woman in a sexual manner. I felt like a human being, and almost cried. We moved on to the bed, but she laughed at me. She positioned her body so that it was difficult for me to have intercourse and eventually she told me to stop when I began to do it with feeling. Another SP had to take over to finish me, but fortunately she was comforting though lacked engagement. After it was over, she counseled me. (She and the other woman were Dutch, and as expected their English was perfect.) One of the advices she gave me was how it does not feel good without love. I wish I could find love, but I know that is not possible for me. That night I felt disgusted, angry and hated myself for seeing an SP. I wanted to kill myself. I went completely against my own moral convictions and support of feminism. The experience was not pleasurable at all, but rather very nerve racking and riddled with guilt throughout the whole act. It was something to simply do it and get it out of the way, so that I would be just like other non-virgin men.

I had two more days left in Amsterdam, so I decided to give it one more try and visited another agency. She was Belgian. She spoke with a French accent, so I had a difficult time comprehending her. Still, she was more comforting and psychologically put me at ease right away. She was affectionate, pretty and even erotic. She gave me a massage, which really put me at ease physically, and when we were doing it she appeared to be enjoying it as well. Of course, she was acting, but I appreciated her effort for a loser like me. I finally felt good, had that “afterglow,” mood of calm and strangely felt free. I ruminated if the moment of orgasm was the only possible authentic state of freedom. She explained something to me that lingered while taking a walk after visiting her, which was that visiting an independent SP or reputable agency was a good and healthy thing, as long as I do not over indulge, because sex is a necessary human experience.

Perhaps, I was becoming a corrupt scum, or I was becoming desensitized to seeing an SP. Unfortunately, this feeling of bliss was temporary as all experiences of authenticity are temporary, and I visited SP’s occasionally since then to seek respite from the severe feeling of loneliness. Having discovered what it feels like to be with someone, even with simulated intimacy, I began to long for it more and more. Still, even though the guilt and self-hate is not to the degree that it was when I first started seeing SPs, it continues and sometimes erupts with weight.

I am now 40 years of age, and I have never been with any woman, other than SP’s, because I have always been rejected. However, I also have not tried to initiate even a conversation with most women because of my debilitating anxiety, so I seek the comfort of intimacy with independent SP's to deal with the misery. I realize now that, as a human being, we all need to be touched to at least survive and live on, but once my mom dies I have no reason to live. I have no close or trust worthy friends, and so the loneliness is intense. I am damaged-goods, so even if someone would want me I can’t allow my baggage to affect her life in a negative manner. Therefore, I am not allowed a conventional relationship.

I Was Haunted

I grew up devoutly religious. My religion taught me that sex was sacred and not to be trifled with. Something about the forbidden fruits there that created an obsession. Since losing my faith, I discovered that many others in my faith and other similar authoritarian based faiths also were plagued by this same obsession. I was warned all the time about the evils of pornography and petting and fornication. Tsk. Gasoline to the fires of curiosity.

So I got married... young... I was 23. I brought my fascination of sex into the marriage only to discover that my mate was not well matched to my interests and we floated off into separate corners of the marital galaxies. I found myself dabbling in phone sex a couple of times only to be consumed by hollowness. That marriage ended and I soon remarried to a wonderful woman. We are very much in love. But again, the sex is so so. I was haunted. Was I to be one of those men who ventured through life not knowing what real sex was? The thought tortured me.

The first time I caved into actually soliciting a prostitute, I had already spent several peripheral moments observing the various local streetwalkers, fascinated by their craft and wondering if they really could provide excellent sex.

I drank some beer, became inebriated, and found the courage to call an agency. I could barely speak on the phone. She came over. She noted I was drunk and charged me what seemed to be a high price but I was desperate. I wanted to go down on her and her do the same to me. She apparently did not bring protection. That still baffles me to this day as my subsequent encounters showed that to be a total anomaly. My first experience was unprotected sex with a whore. What a moron I was.

I spent the next month absolutely racked with a fear that I had picked up aids. I went to a local health care provider to get tested. They asked me questions and stupid me answered that yes, I had sex with a whore. Whatever. The nurse just stared at me like I had three heads. I felt so stupid.

The whole experience was a let down and curbed my appetite for a couple of years.

Then the call of the wild came haunting back as those years were filled with the same old so so sex with my wife. I wanted more. She will not consent to anal sex or role playing or anything kinky as she is devoutly religious. The same nagging of "Is this all there will be for me?" came sauntering back into my life. So I visited a whorehouse and was so nervous that I could barely get it up. She massaged me and spoke softly in her broken asian accent. Things finally clicked and I had so so sex with a bonafide whore in a bonafide place of "ill repute". It was thrilling. I was hooked.

I found another asian cutie who was willing to finger my anus. She had long fingernails so I told her to stop. Then I mounted her for what seemed to be 30 minutes and had a powerful climax. She washed me off and I hustled out the door. It was good but not excellent. I returned a month later to find another asian cutie, much older than myself but with a very large cup size. Could this be it? I got nervous. She was very gentle and soft and caring and spread her legs so wide I did not know legs could do that... and her large breasts sent me over the edge in less than a minute. She comforted me and acknowledged that I was just too nervous. Dang. Another let down... but I was still hooked.

But why? The sex wasn't all that great. Probably because I was so nervous every time. I visited again to several houses about 15 different times. Walking up to them found my heart pounding out of my chest. It was thrilling. Each time I wondered if finally I would have the great sex I craved. However, none of my visits have provided me with anything existentially mind bending. Every time I walked out I felt badly. Gotta love that old religious programming, dammit! I even tried sex with a shemale... which turned out to be anticlimatic because I could not get it up. I wanted to suck her dry but could not bring myself to do it. I tried to penetrate her but failed. She tried to penetrate me but could not get hard enough. We parted wondering what was wrong with me. The thought of having sex with a girl who also had an extra bonus for me was so titillating and I was amazed by how beautiful and feminine a pre-op transsexual was. The whole scene absolutely fascinates me. They are actually real people with real breast implants and real desires to have sex with men as a half way female. I was so sure I wanted it because some times I think I have low levels of homosexuality and this appeared to be the perfect transition attempt. I am pretty sure I will try sex with another shemale another time just to be sure it wasn't me. The thought of that excites me... but I am still very attracted to full females.

I believe part of my exploration into having sex with 15-20 prostitutes (I lost count) has to do with freeing myself from the tendrils of religion. Doing an act that I know is so taboo in my former religion empowers me to distance myself from it. That distance is something I need. I can't stand organized religion and it's surefire dogmatism of morality. Who are they to tell me what is moral? There was guilt, but also an accompanying sense of vanquishment and separation from any sort of God that might exist that I found comforting. It was like a moment of guilt followed by a sense of me sticking my middle finger up at the controlling religious roots that held me captive and took such advantage of my first 2 decades of life. I loved that feeling.

I have studied my guilt and found that it lies within the context of not being able to connect with my wife. I blame myself for that. I want great sex and I can't have it. The guilt does not come from any sense of "oh my... I am going to hell now" as I don't believe such a place exists. I just feel badly that there exists no tantalizing sexual connection with my wife.

I'm Not a John

I’m not a john. Never wanted to be one.

Not for any great moralistic reasons, not because it is bad or sinful or exploitative or anything like that, although I later developed some opinions on that. But because I never felt any attraction at all towards the idea.

For me, sex is basically a friendly act. You don’t have to be in love or anything, but for sex to be interesting for me, it has to be accepting and participatory; basically, if a woman isn’t actually interested in having sex with me, I’m not interested in having sex with her. So if I am paying someone to pretend to like me or be turned on, well, it feels about as sexy as cold mashed potatoes.

And all this would be fine, but because of my social work type job, over the years I have found myself on various prostitution groups; some working to help sex-workers, some to abate street-level prostitution, some to help underage sex-workers, and so on. And when you are doing that kind of work, well there is always the nagging suspicion that you are actually a john, rather like the pedophile/cub-scout leader. There seems to almost be an assumption that all men are potential johns, only being held back by money, or a spouse, or social conditioning, or religious/ethical beliefs. It is rather like the fundies that are so scared of gay sex: they almost seem to think that every man has a fag lurking within, struggling to get out and enjoy addictive gay sex.

Well it just ain’t so. And I really don’t like people thinking this way about me. But when you are actually working with sex-workers and ex-sex-workers, they seem to almost have an article of faith that all men have either hired a hooker, or want to. And that because of their work, they think that they are some kind of sex expert, and have a good understanding of male psychology. (Porn stars seem to get into the same way of thinking--one thing about sex work I think, is that it can warp your thinking.) Which isn’t true, they just have a good understanding of the psychology of johns, who are, I believe, a minority. (I also don’t believe the figures given for the porn industry--I suspect that the numbers are a lot smaller, and that there are a small percentage of porn consumers that consume the majority of the porn sold. But that’s just my guess.)

It is true, as Mark Twain said, that 90% of men masturbate, and the other 10% lie about it, and it is also true that there isn’t a man alive that hasn’t enjoyed looking at some kind of porn or other a few times if he has had the opportunity, but it is not true that every man is a potential john. Indeed, not every man is even a stripper spectator. I went to a few shows, and it was interesting at first in an almost anthropological sort of way, but once you’ve seen a couple of shows, you’ve seen them all, it gets dull as ditchwater listening to bad music, drinking over-priced drinks, and being surrounded by losers. I just don’t get the guys that are into that either.

I know from experience that street-level prostitution is a very nasty business. It is very dangerous work, where assault and rape is a matter of When, not If. It pays terribly, and workers are ruthlessly and violently exploited by pimps and gangs and dealers. And most of them are doing it out of desperation, usually driven by addiction.

There is a very old cultural myth, the hopeful belief in the carefree happy hooker, the prostitute with the heart of gold, the satisfied professional. And I am sure there are some, working as escorts and such, I have no direct knowledge, but in my experience, there are damn few working on the street. Most of the women working on the street that I have encountered are desperately unhappy; not unhappy because they are hooking, but more that they are hooking because they are unhappy, or perhaps that the same things that are making them unhappy are also driving them to sell their bodies.

My experiences have turned me from being bored by the whole notion of hiring a hooker, to being repulsed by the idea. When you have seen, when you know, why a hooker is doing what she is doing, what her life is like, only a monster or sociopath could want to engage in it. I’ve seen too many needle tracks, too many apprehended children, too many disappearances, too many bruises and cuts and fits of terror and panic.

In the cities I have worked in, and when I talk to my colleagues in other cities, the levels of street prostitution seem to be falling. There are probably a lot of factors behind this, but one of them seems to be smarter policing: most of the time the cops aren’t targeting street-walkers, they are targeting the johns. And johns tend to be a fairly frightened bunch, and easy to scare off with publicized busts and car confiscations and mandatory attendance at john-schools. But we really don’t understand the psychology at work; I really don’t think it is as simple as being horny and finding an outlet.

A group I was working with started recording the license plates of guys cruising the stroll, and we compiled a fairly large database before the government cracked down and stopped releasing information on the plates to us. But while we were running it, we discovered a few interesting things. First of all, the johns were coming from every part of the city, except the neighborhood of the stroll itself. Proportionally, they were coming from every neighborhood of the city: there was no distinction between high-income, middle-class, and poor neighborhoods. Which surprised us, we had figured the rich guys would patronize escorts, and poor guys wouldn’t have the cash. But it turns out that a desire to slum with a street-hooker crosses class and income lines. Which is I suppose bad news.

(And what probably helped in shutting us down was that a few of plates turned out to belong to fairly prominent/well-connected people in the community, hmm.)

The second thing that the data showed was that there weren’t all that many johns. What there was were high-repeat johns; the majority of the traffic were the same guys coming back again and again. Which I would take as good news; maybe I am right and most men are not in fact actual, and hopefully not potential, johns.

What we were starting to discover, when they shut us down, was that over half of the johns appeared to be married (and a significant number of the cars had baby or child seats in the back, ick). Hiring a hooker, it seemed, was not so much about seeking a source of sexual outlet, but a hobby or vocation or pastime of its own. Some men seem to like being johns, like hiring street workers for its own sake. Which seems rather strange to me. But perhaps some of the radfems are right about at least some men: they seem to like exploitative, power-imbalanced sex.

But please, they ain’t most of us.