I was only 20 the first time I orgasmed with a client, and only a few months into sex work. I was shocked that I could experience something so personal in a work setting with an older man I wasn’t even attracted to. The act of orgasm made me feel so vulnerable that it was like a violation, a betrayal by my own body. I didn’t want to see the client again after that, so I asked the manager of our erotic massage parlour to turn him down if he tried to book me again.
I now realise that it was a real shame we never met again. He would’ve been a good regular client, the kind that the older women at work always refer to as our “bread and butter”. I have since learned for myself, during lean periods especially, that it is my long relationships with regulars that sustain me.
Another lesson I learned is that an orgasm has no deeper meaning. It doesn’t mean I’m into the client, or that he knows me better than any other or has seen through the performance to the “real” me—which anyway is far more likely to be exposed in conversation than sex. An orgasm doesn’t mean I’ve given away a part of myself, and it doesn’t take away from the orgasms that I have in my private life. Now, I just view an orgasm at work as a bonus that can happen suddenly and inexplicably. In a strange twist of fate, it often happens with those clients I am most physically repulsed by.
I now realise that my feelings about that first orgasm weren’t about sex but about intimacy. I was experiencing something I would dub an “intimacy overload”. I have struggled with intimacy overloads with work clients, and I have also seen clients experience them with me.
There was another client in my initial months at that same parlour who touched and held me as if I was his girlfriend. This was memorable, as it was the first time I was treated with such intense intimacy by a client; it made me feel like this must’ve been a special moment between us. Two years later he made a booking with me at a different parlour and, when I opened the door and greeted him by name, he turned around and walked out. I realised that what I had thought was a unique experience between us was something he engaged in (sought out, even) with all the working girls he saw. He didn’t need a reminder that he had shared that intimacy with me, too—I suspect my acknowledgement held up a mirror to his myriad past intimacies, and it somehow shamed him that I so eagerly remembered him.
Many clients who behave with such tenderness in the room want to move on anonymously and without being reminded of the many girls they see. The next time a client from a previous parlour came to me at a new one, I waited to see if he would recognise me before I admitted to our past connection. He gave no indication that he did, but the booking went well regardless. I pretended—and allowed him to pretend—that we were forming a fresh, burning connection.
Another time when I saw somebody grappling with an intimacy overload was during a beautiful booking with a young man whose wife had died a few months previously. I was the first person he’d slept with after she had passed away. In the room he was tentative, and I was gentle. From my perspective things went well, but afterwards he left the most vicious review to the brothel receptionists, criticising everything from my personality to my breast size. I cried, confused and upset, because to me we had met in a moment of mutual kindness. It is very rare to have a client leave a bad review with management—in fact it was the only time that happened to me in the two years I was at that shop. But then I realised his disproportionate reaction was tied in some way to his own heightened emotional state—perhaps a sense of loyalty to his dead wife—rather than entirely to do with me.
Something similar happened to me not too long ago. The first time after the death of my friend that I was with a client and orgasmed, I sobbed. I apologised to the client afterwards, saying it had nothing to do with him—my tears were triggered by my discomfort and guilt about experiencing pleasure when she had gone. This was another unexpected intimacy overload, and an unpredictable reaction to it.
