Sex workers know not to expect commitment but still…

Regular Customers

Repeat customers. People who come back again and again. I have no formal business training but I imagine they are the life blood of many businesses. This is certainly the case in sex work. It is better to have people you know with whom you have developed trust than to meet strangers who could be any kind of crazy. If you have regulars you can feel closer to normal, and I have heard people kind of in denial, who said, “I have friends who help me out. They are just friends. I would never do that. What you do.” Maybe my life would be easier if I did not insist upon being rigorously honest with myself. I knew what they did, what I did, was considered prostitution. But after awhile was it really? Over the years, yes, these relationships can last for years, interactions are not strictly transactional. Ok, there are no sexual favors without payment. However, women call their regulars, who have become friends, for help. I have seen men who started off as basic tricks show up at prison to visit. I have seen them bring diapers for a baby that is not their baby but belongs to the provider’s boyfriend. The boyfriend was never around when these drop offs happened. He was either away for the moment doing whatever or away for awhile doing time. One rule that holds firm is that the only people who meet the client/friend are other working girls who might be present when he drops off some item. He does not meet other men in her life and he does not introduce her to the people in his official life. But the working girls see everything.

One of the upsides of being someone who has seen it all is that people feel a combination of feelings–safe, bc you understand, superior, bc who are you to judge them? In my humble opinion, professional people spend a considerable amount of time making sure they appear to be what people think they are. Their identities are wrapped up in other people’s opinion. I think a lot of white collar embezzlement and thefts from businesses happens bc people are trying to maintain a”lifestyle” which is visible to all. That lifestyle does not include knowing people like us, from the back streets of downtown Honolulu. Little does the public know that these professional men, wearing their dress aloha shirts and shoes (not slippers like the street guts downtown) are “regulars.” They have clandestine relationships with women they met when they were cruising Kukui Street looking for a woman to pay for sex. Well, to amend that, they were not just looking but had found one or more women they favored.

You know not to get attached but what we know and what we do…

Every woman on the street had one or more regulars. It was pretty common for these guys to get pulled in to the scene and only reluctantly go to work. A guy could easily be a regular for more than one woman. There were a handful of guys who had dated several women for years. They did not always want sex. These guys were into the gossip. They wanted to know the news in the women’s lives. The women want to keep their regulars and not just from a financial standpoint. Women get attached. They do not expect him to leave his wife or only date her but they start to expect to see him every week, or month, whatever the usual interval. They know the should not count on money from him but it is hard not to. Some basic math shows you how valuable it is to receive money from which the government has not taken its entitlement. You figure out how much you would have to make at a regular job just to end up with $500 in your hand at the end of the month. You would have to make $750 from which the government would take its third. If you could have three or four regulars who pay you as little as a hundred whenever they see you each week, you would be making more money than any job you could get in Honolulu’s job pool.

But the deeper Truth is you do something most people do not do but you have emotions and concerns typical of everyone. You want to be able to remain indifferent about his absence or presence but that is impossible. When the person does not contact you on the timeline you have come to expect, you worry. How in the world would you find out if anything had happened to him. You are not listed as one of his emergency contacts. Even if you know where he works after years of conversation, it is not like you can call there. Who would you claim to be? One thing about the men who call themselves “hobbyists” is that they can keep their secrets. Absolutely no one in their public life will ever hear them say anything that would raise a smidgen of suspicion. It is rather extraordinary that such a large part of their lives can be kept secret. However, I have seen that men can make the most out of tacking an hour onto the workday schedule they give their wives. Certainly you cannot check with his wife.

You know better than to check with him. He already has obligations he must fulfill and you are a break from everything he has to do. If he starts to feel like he has to see you, you have worked against what he is looking for by seeing you. No strings attached is kind of a myth . You worry about each other and want to see each other but when he needs to be free of ties that bind you have to let him.

Is everything a double standard with men and women? So it seems. In an upcoming post I will talk about how he wants to be the only man. He would never, absolutely never, accept his wife having a man on the side. And he would rather believe he is the only man in his hooker’s life. That’s what you present to him, that he is your one and only while you never call to ask where he is.

DISCLAIMER: THESE POSTS DESCRIBE GENERAL OBSERVATIONS WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT BE TRUE AND ARE DEFINITELY FILTERED THROUGH THE BIASED LENS OF ONE PERSON’S PERCEPTION. INDIVIDUAL RELATIONSHIPS VARY. DO NOT EXPECT THE DEFINITIVE WORD ON THE WAY IT “IS.”