A former sex worker has lifted the lid on what it was like to work in the prostitution industry and what her ‘riskiest’ moment with a client was.
After she graduated with a business degree, Elizabeth G travelled to Sydney and began working in an erotic massage parlour.
Aged 29 at the time, she returned to the UK to start a Masters degree, and the student went and worked in a full service escort agency to help pay for her tuition fees.
Elizabeth, 41, has now opened up about the life of a sex worker in her book Unashamed: Why do people pay for sex?.
However, over that 20-year period, there was ‘just one hairy moment’.
“It was when myself and actually a colleague, went to a booking and it was these three men, they looked so high, it’s like they hadn’t slept for two or three days”, Elizabeth told Fabulous.
“When I was with one of the clients, I saw just out the corner of my eye, they had two massive machetes next to him.
“And when I had the opportunity, I went and told my colleague, and she confronted him about it, and said, ‘Why do you have two machetes?’
“And he just said, ‘For protection’. So I think they must have been drug dealers, but they didn’t threaten us with them, but it was one of those moments that was very uncomfortable and not a situation I would want to be in again.”
The most difficult part of sex work, she says, was ‘allowing clients to pursue my heart, which happened quite a lot’.
“I think the appeal with dating a client would mean that I wouldn’t have the anxiety of worrying about telling a prospective partner about my job and face abuse and shame,” she explained.
“So sometimes I would date clients, and it ended in disaster every single time, because then I’d find they’d go and book somebody else behind my back, or it just, it just didn’t work.
“So that was the main downfall for me with the job, was allowing clients to pursue my heart and get into these toxic relationships which never, ever worked.”
But while she was working, Elizabeth felt like she ‘was really helping people’ through their problems.
“I almost felt like a sex therapist in a sense. There were a lot of people that I saw who were struggling and who were going through mental health problems,” she said.
“Obviously, sex is a part of sex work, and I was able to build up lots of lovely clients and loyal regulars, and we would explore things with each other.
“So yes, there is a sexual side to it, of course. I suppose with a sex worker, compared to an actual therapist, you can, you get that physical contact, you get that skin-on-skin connection and energy that you don’t get from a therapist.”
