Boys Will Be Boys: Issues with Young Clients
I will preface this post by agreeing that generalizations about any demographic are never universal or applicable to an entire population. I have had young clients that were typical and unmemorable in any way, and a few proven to be considerate, polite, and respectful...truly a pleasure to serve. That being said, generalizations and stereotypes are often derived from substantial anecdotal evidence from many individuals’ experiences.
The demographic characteristic I have personally found to correlate most often with certain unpleasant behavior is age. Any sex worker with the experience to identify patterns will agree that young clients frequently differ from their older counterparts. For our purposes here, I define “young” clients as roughly between the ages of 18-36.
Few characteristics give me pause like youth. When I first started working as an escort, mentorless and bumping into hard lessons along my path, I noticed different behavior between men of different generations. Still today, I find age to be the single most reliable indication of behavior and attitude.
When we analyze the endlessly evolving cultural dynamics and social tendencies at play...it is easy to theorize why younger men stand apart. Growing up with free internet porn, the hook up culture resulting in Tinder, contradictory messages about sex from peers and media, ambiguous and murating gender roles, insecurities caused by narrow standards of masculinity, the existential confusion of early adulthood, and involuntary floods of testosterone all culminate in a perfect storm of factors creating young men without sufficient life experience, operating on misconceptions, and influenced by egos bloated with hidden insecurity.
Young clients have the same reasons to book a session with an escort that any man would. Disillusionment with modern dating, a desire to fulfill needs without emotional risk, or a decision to treat themselves to a individualized and simple sexual encounter motivate men of all ages to forgo pick-up tactics for a trip to the ATM. However, there is an extra stigma applied to young men seeking sex workers. This sometimes fuels feelings of shame, embarrassment, failure, and inadequacy in young men ill equipped to process these emotions or disregard such messages. As we have been shown time and time again in recent years, when young men fester in insecurity and lonely isolation...the threat of violence swells.
While some of my young clients are virgins, shy, autistic, or socially awkward in one way or another, the vast majority of them are attractive, successful, and charming guys with all the standard social intelligence and manners expected for their age. They aren't the isolated, maladjusted characters the uninformed and sex-negative morality police paint them as. I believe it is DUE to the fact they are largely regular guys, not in spite of it, that they have such a hard time interacting with sex workers in a way that leaves both parties feeling respected, safe, and free of regret.
The behaviors exhibited by these men all relate to difficulty identifying the role and associated boundaries exclusive to sex workers. The type of relationship between sex worker and client combines elements of both professionalism and intimacy, two elements that are normally in stark contrast with each other and positioned at opposite ends of the relationship continuum. A sex worker is both a hired service provider and a sexual partner. Young men often have trouble finding balance between those roles and their corresponding behavior. One role or the other becomes too dominant.
Issues with Business Dominated Relationship
When clients focus too heavily on the business component, seeing sex workers as primarily a hired service provider similar to a maid, the dynamic can leave the escort feeling unsafe or degraded. Of course, escorts ARE hired service providers, but narrowing the relationship to disregard the other aspects of it can create an unpleasant dynamic for her and a poor reputation for him.
Business minded clients may view themselves as the boss, the infallible customer, the exclusive director of the encounter. Sex is a commodity, too strictly separate from intimacy and affection. Often these men heavily objectify women in general and see sex as a mechanical recreational activity unaligned with any sort of relationship of any type. They look down on the escort as both a sex object and a service worker, as someone lucky to have their patronage and obligated to demonstrate their value exclusively through acts of service, disregarding any emotional value or applicable personality traits. They want the services she offers, yet looks down on her for being so immoral as to offer them. Her limits and requirements amount to poor customer service, and asserting demands for respect are seen as unprofessional.
This mindset leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of the terms of their agreement and what his donation money actually secures. They believe money quite literally rents her body, purchases her unlimited consent, and her obligation to satisfy his demands. He believes his payment purchases total control, and as a paying customer, he is always right. Instead of the escort being a person providing a service, she is merely the packaging around the product, pussy.
This attitude often results in him first trying to negotiate rates or asking her to explain her justification for them, to tell him why she is worth her asking rate, demand explicit discussion of her services or additional photos. An encounter may begin by him making several verbal demands, varying in intensity. Some can be unreasonably degrading and unsafe, or beyond what their level of trust would warrant.
He may, for example, request she allow him to tie her up on a first meeting or constantly command and direct her during an act. (”Deeper. Choke on it. Don’t use your hands. Look me in the eye. Spit on it. Harder. Faster.”) Sometimes the demands are not verbalized, but instead he takes action without communication or consent. For example, he will choke or slap her without asking if it is ok, and use degrading language that shows his mindset without discussing it beforehand. (“Suck it you dirty whore. You like that, don’t you, nasty bitch?”)
He may believe an hour session means an hour of sexual activity, even if he showers and spends several minutes explaining his expectations. I even had one young client ask me to “pause our time” when he had to use the bathroom. An hour session means an hour of her time, her company, regardless of how that time is spent. Because of how he defines their transaction, he believes only time spent sexually active counts. Anything less than everything he wants with no limits leaves him feeling cheated out of what he paid for.
This attitude makes him a disrespectful, insufferable client. Most escorts will refuse to see him again.
Issues with an Intimacy Dominated Relationship
On the opposite end of the spectrum are the young men that align the role of a sex worker too strongly with intimacy. Often these men have always associated sex exclusively with love, affection, and committed romantic relationships.
Cultural messages boys absorb dictate they have meaningless casual sex, and easily accomplish those conquests with no emotional effects or responses. While some men certainly master the capacity to separate emotional partner bonding from physical sexual acts, it does not come naturally to others. Despite the desire to willfully prevent any sentimental or affectionate attachment, their pair bonding chemical processes activate when physical intimacy occurs, nonetheless.
The release of certain hormones in the brain stimulated by physical closeness and sex is the mechanism by which all humans develop bonds and fall in love. Pair bonding is an evolutionary development that has contributed to species survival for thousands and thousands of years. There is nothing abnormal about the system functioning properly and responding to the stimuli as intended. Women produce these chemicals more often and in higher quantities, but both sexes fall victim to the effects they bring.
Adults can adapt to mitigate this involuntary physiological response to participate casual sex encounters without lingering turmoil. However, some men, younger men in particular, may not have the experience, wisdom, motivation, or even desire to combat the body and mind‘s reaction to these mechanism.
When these young men become clients, they often hope to use the opportunity to hone the skill of apathy. Objectification is not their strong suit, but hiring an escort is a chance to practice this manly characteristic. Either consciously or subconsciously, many enter the arrangement secretly holding a deep, unspoken hope that the sex worker will prove, in a romantically theatrical twist, to be a potential romantic partner or love connection.
They see an escort simply as a woman, like any other, and therefore a potential mate. Of course, seeing her as human is ideal and great. But, in addition, they have a hard time seeing an escort as a service provider at all...instead of seeing a woman he has hired, he denies or ignores the fact that her role in the relationship is a job for her and their encounter has a very different meaning to her.
These young men have a tendency to see the sex worker as a damsal in distress, an innocent victim of a harsh world, a hidden and misunderstood diamond in the rough. They may fantasize a series of events where through his sincere respect, validation of her humanity, and gentle kindness he sets himself apart from all the other men in her life to such a degree that she responds with a display of vulnerability, show of genuine affection, and forms a special bond with him. His sensitivity and sincerity heals her of her jaded view if men. These are the “what is a great girl like you doing something like this for?” guys. The “I could take you away from all this.” guys. Captain Save-a-hoe, if you will.
Of course, their attitude is not always that extreme or expressed so outwardly. Most have the objectivity and self awareness to know hopeless romantics aren’t admired by the masses. These clients are much more pleasant than their transaction-focused counterparts. They are usually an escort’s favorite clients. These clients are respectful, thoughtful, and may go above and beyond to show appreciation with tips, gifts, and favors.
The issues that come with these young men mostly effect only themselves, at first. They may develop a strong attachment to an escort they see regularly. She may take advantage of his affection financially. Beyond the heartache of a crush that won’t be validated, though, this gentle and romantic mindset does not create too many hassles day to day. Just a forlorn and disappointing heartache subtly lurking in his psyche.
He may text her for friendly conversation with no intention of booking a session or discussing anything anything pertaining to her role as his hired companion. If she engages, it will be while “in character” and with her business in mind. He may imagine he knows her better than he actually does and form an idealized, assumed version of her in his head derived from the representative persona she performs for the world. Good customer service or friendly, yet unenthusiastic engagement may be interpreted as evidence that she returns the deeper emotional connection and bond he feels. Jealousy may start to arise from knowing her work includes giving attention and affection to others. He will want to feel special and different, separate from other clients. He will convince himself the nature of his interactions with her are more genuine than with others.
All of this may create a bit of heartache and frustration on his part. She may perceive his overly familiar and frequent contact as an overstepping of boundaries and waste of time, leaving her overwhelmed, irritated, or unsure how to respond. These issues, for the most part, only amount to a minor annoyance in most cases. It can appear as just a harmless crush, admiration sex workers are all too familiar with.
More serious behaviors, but nevertheless harmless, include things like asking for free time, extras, or photos. He may cross boundaries by treating her like a potential partner and hounding her for dinner/movie dates free of charge, to “give him a chance.” He may confront her with questions about her feelings towards him.
However, it is when the usual dynamic of their working relationship is disrupted, or when an event happens that makes her honest transactional and professional perspective obvious and apparent, things can become dramatic, intense, and dangerous quickly. An overly attached client that reads her polite engagement as signs of special closeness will become disillusioned, embarrassed, resentful, or vengeful when it becomes clear that the relationship will never deepen or progress into something more. When he realizes that, to her, he may be just one of many men in her life with no special position or place of priority, he may feel humiliated and rejected. The raw emotions caused by heartbreak and rejection can create a dangerous, spiteful, and aggressive man out of these once gentle, sweet, ideal clients. NiceGuy (tm) syndrome.
Young clients with trouble finding professional boundaries with a woman they have been physically intimate with set themselves up for disappointment. When their fantasy is disproven, they may lack the maturity to handle rejection with humility and understanding.
The drama, unpredictability, emotional demands, and misunderstanding of how to follow the typical boundaries make these clients exhausting. They can be annoying at best and dangerous at worst. Escorts do not wish to harm their clients or hurt them with rejection. But in these cases, he puts himself in a position that leaves her with no good options. The letdown has to come eventually. Because that moment and it’s fallout is so unpredictable, it can be daunting and leave both parties locked in needless turmoil and drama.
So, that is my lengthy explanation pondering the reasons so many sex workers avoid young clients or, at least, put up some extra defenses. The role a sex worker plays in a young man’s life can be confusing and hard to define. Youth of both genders already struggle with learning how to manage emotions and relationships, so it is no surprise these problems can arise. Sex workers and young men both need to do their part to ensure the function of the relationship, it’s boundaries, and expectations are managed and realistically presented. There is no need for hiring an escort to lead to hurt feelings on either side.
When both parties take care to understand the needs, wants, and perspectives of each other the relationship can be a great benefit to everyone involved.