As a working-class escort from the north of England who works in central London, I’ve come to view my wealthy clients like attractions in a zoo: precious exotic creatures to be admired, fed and cautiously petted.
I often have a recurring dream of wild animals trying to attack me. Just as the onslaught is about to take place, I manage to wake up in a disturbed haze, disorientated but somehow relieved. It is always predatory zoo animals, the type you find on safari or behind Plexiglass. They change form every night, each in a wildly different environment. A crocodile floating down the Nile, a trapped lion at a circus, a bull in a crack den – they’re always ready to pounce.
I know these nightly visitations represent my clients. Apex predators at the top of their game – I’m a toy to be played with. In my nightmares there is no sexual connection, which makes the dreams slightly alarming. Sex and violence work well together – violence on its own is just boring.
As a working-class escort from the north of England who works in central London, I’ve come to view my wealthy clients like attractions in a zoo: precious exotic creatures to be admired, fed and cautiously petted. Fifty-something men who haunt The Ned’s Vault on weekday nights, take business lunches at The Connaught and sport £60,000 Rolexes (despite the slew of recent muggings).
They make a booking with me by text or WhatsApp, and glide into my apartment as if on golden ether. Peacock feathers burst from within their suits, standing in my hallway with an ease that has been instilled in them since forever.
They see me as an exotic creature too. I’ve got a thick regional accent that both embarrasses and delights them, and an overly friendly demeanour. Travelling north of Birmingham would give most of my clients a nosebleed, so my intrusion into their sphere is seen as a novelty. I fit the stereotype without being a caricature. Buxom but not fat, witty but not cruel, gentle without the condescension. I enjoy this roleplay – and they enjoy it too. The emotional labour doesn’t feel transactional, so the sex that follows comes with ease. Sex has no class (or so you would believe).
I started out at £150 per hour on a well-known escort directory competing against hundreds of other women. I didn’t have any professional photos as they were too expensive (£1,000 for ten edited pictures). It’s incredibly expensive working as a high-class escort – £1,000 a week for zone 1 rent, £300 for a single lingerie set, £400 a month for online adverts, £1,000 for Botox and fillers, £100 a month on nails – the list goes on.
When I first came to London, I had never been on a dinner date, or even to a fancy restaurant. Dinner dates are always four hours long, and, depending on the company, can fly by or feel like a prison sentence – two hours at dinner, two hours back at his or my hotel. Before I started this line of work, the most expensive meal I had ever eaten was at Nando’s. Suddenly, I found myself struggling not to fall over in fake designer heels in Berkeley Square on my way to meet a Magic Circle solicitor in Mayfair. I picked at Michelin-starred taster menus and averted eye contact with the sommeliers. Conversation was interrupted by awkward silence and my fidgeting hands, and I often didn’t understand what they were talking about. I felt like I was drowning, and would face these dates with dread – terrified of saying the wrong thing or being exposed as a fraud. The men would take pity on me and feign niceties, only to never book me again. Some would openly mock my accent. I was failing their tests, and I didn’t even know what the questions were.
So I had to change. I didn’t know what to change into, but my current form of plebeian had to be erased. I Googled ‘where do rich people go in London?’. I began reading Tatler and researched the FTSE 1oo. I studied French restaurant menus while gorging on a KFC in my tiny Paddington studio. Gone were my long acrylics and in their place were short nude nails á la Kate Middleton. No more mini skirts, wedge heels or lip filler. What did women wear to Annabel’s? What was a riesling? Why am I not supposed to like it south of the river and how did Lady Victoria Hervey end up so right-wing? These trivial questions became my obsession.
With a select few clients I see, I’m able to laugh and be myself, surprisingly having a lot of things in common (but only really on an emotional level). The sex is good and it often feels like we’re teenagers. While my clients are assuredly confident at first, their nerves begin to show in the bedroom. Childishly smiling as the bank transfer is made and blushing as he begins to undress, I know that, yes, now is the time for the fun to start. It’s taboo and seedy – but also endearing.
I charge a lot. My rate ranges from £400 to £1,000 per hour depending on the service. It’s vaguely true that the more money a client has, the more they will expect. The text messages I receive from potential clients range from being asked to defecate on a Swedish investment banker’s chest to an anonymous man offering £1,000 to pretend to talk like his wife (I refused the first out of disgust and accepted the second out of fascination).
Some of my clients want to talk about boarding school, which is an alien concept to me. My own memories of school are of pregnant teenagers, cheap school plays and a 39% GCSE pass rate. Nine-year-old boys at boarding school being raped while their parents turn a blind eye for fear of upsetting the establishment – that wasn’t part of my world. I am patient and listen to their recollections of abandonment and shame, but I cannot understand it.
Sexual proclivities are also shaped through boredom. More often than not, clients just want escapism and someone to talk to. Men who pay more than £300 for prostitutes are often prolific and have been with every type of woman – from the supermodel ebony in Chelsea on £500 per hour to the Brazilian redhead on Goodge Street at £120 per hour. It’s an easy addiction to start. There are, on a weekday evening, 10,000 escorts in London. Sex work is legal, five-star hotels are willing locations and escort agencies openly have their offices listed in well-known apartment blocks on their websites.
For the majority of clients, the situation is the same. They live in Zone 1 Monday to Thursday, and spend 12 hours in endless meetings with clients. Their only respite is alcohol, the odd line and visits to escorts. They tell me how they find business dinners at the Wolseley tedious, how they can’t talk openly to their peers about anything beyond work, and are upset that they are never allowed to be truly intimate with their wives – the insertion of fingers into a vagina is, I am told, a no-go for many upper-class women, deemed too crude an act for the receiver.
I’m good at class drag. It’s an act that the clients don’t explicitly ask for but is still expected. Many working-class escorts cosplay as being high-class in a desperate attempt to impress their upper-class clients, either to gain respect or possibly recreate the Pretty Woman scenario of lifetime love. I used to suffer from these delusions too. If you are charging a hefty amount, you have to bring it on. I know the basics and can just about get away with masquerading as high class. I know that you should holiday in St Moritz, celebrate the Glorious Twelfth with an extra-large Fortnum & Mason hamper and never, ever, wear designer logos. But I fail miserably at faking an RP accent, cannot stand the taste of Champagne and dislike Wimbledon. It’s a fine line.
It was all very confusing at first, but eventually I moulded a new role for myself. I am allowed to be working-class but not too working-class. I can tell anecdotes from my hometown, but must leave out the abject poverty. I am allowed to be intelligent, but must never outsmart them. And I definitely have to hide my socialist sympathies – I’m now a red-wall Tory. I can talk with my accent, but must tone it down in public.
I’m also aware that faking it ‘til I make it won’t work either. I haven’t got the gusto to pretend to fit in. It doesn’t matter what clothes I wear or what wine I drink, the class divide between myself and my clients is a gaping chasm – but one that I think we both secretly relish.
I can’t deny that there is a chip on my shoulder that I can’t seem to shake. My anxiety isn’t rude, but it comes from a quiet resentment at the disappointment in my own life. I am insatiably attracted to these men and their lives, then feel inferior and guilty when they are placed before me on a plate.
While being guarded in public, privately clients love to tell me about their exploits. They revel in gossip that makes my eyes bulge like a schoolgirl’s. They reveal secrets for two reasons – they know it will impress me and that I am also trusted. I’m told that foreign state actors bug offices, that some mandarins at Whitehall held MAGA parties during last year’s American election, and that some famous actor who everyone likes is a cunt.
I’m not criticising my clients, I like them very much. They pay me good money that staves off a minimum wage job I would otherwise have to work in, having no qualifications and only patchy office experience. And although it’s embarrassing to admit, they provide meaningful companionship for me. Sex work is a ruthless industry and it is a lonely job. Being stuck in a hotel room, especially on quiet days, is mind-numbingly boring.
So – back to the top – how to stop my recurring dream? Will it resolve itself when I leave this profession, or will they continue, revealing another obtuse trauma to be dug up from my past? The men I see are base animals – but then so am I. While I’m afraid of these animals in my dreams, in reality, the naïve awe I have towards my clients outweighs any fear.
We are both driven and trapped by our own prejudices and pressures that keep us rigidly in place. But for those fragile few hours, the wall is torn down. For now, the game is my collar, tight on my neck, but for a few evenings more, I’ll keep admiring my owners on their gilded leash.
