Legalizing Prostitution: From Illicit Vice to Lawful Business (7 page)

• Third, some indoor sex venues feature a variety of recreation and entertainment. Many brothels offer an array of activities—a bar, pool table, Jacuzzi, sauna, sitting room with sofas, poll dancing, and so on. At least some of the clients patronize these places for their party atmosphere, similar to what many regular clients of strip clubs value about them.
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• Fourth, for the reasons just mentioned, indoor clients are more likely to seek and experience rapport, trust, and intimacy with providers. This is especially true for those who are regular clients, but even for nonregulars the indoor experience can be radically different from what is possible on the streets.
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Though it is not widely known, indoor and street prostitution can offer very different kinds of experiences for clients and providers alike. Street encounters are fleeting: as a rule, conversation is minimal, and the two parties quickly proceed to sex. Conditions on the street—including police surveillance, the furtiveness of the action, and the often cramped settings in which sex occurs—all operate against anything more than a brief and impersonal encounter. Because so little time is spent with customers, the amount and quality of both physical and social contact is truncated. Street workers “depersonalize their contacts with clients,” and even their regular clients are viewed instrumentally, as purely economic assets.
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Indoors, social and physical exchanges are potentially more varied, more mutual, and more “romantic.” The sessions are longer than they are on the street, and compared to the front seat of a car or a dark alley, indoor settings
themselves are much more conducive to prolonged and multifaceted activities. Not only is the customer offered a greater variety of physical pleasures, but the indoor worker is as well. They are more likely than street workers to be caressed, kissed, massaged, or hugged
by
their clients and to
receive
oral sex or manual stimulation from them.
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When call girls in Los Angeles were asked what kinds of activities they had engaged in with their last client, 26 percent of them reported that the man had massaged their genitals and 17 percent had received oral sex from him.
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Decades earlier, a four-year study of more than 1,200 encounters between 64 call girls and their clients in New York reported that in one-quarter of all the sessions the client massaged the woman’s genitals, and in fully 43 percent of the sessions the man engaged in cunnilingus.
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In Queensland, Australia, 68 percent of a sample of 103 legal brothel workers and 83 percent of 102 call girls interviewed stated that they had received oral sex from a customer at some time, and 57 percent of clients (N = 160) stated that they had provided oral sex to a brothel or private provider.
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In their online reviews of escorts on the British website Punternet, clients spend more time writing about their efforts to please the woman than about their own sexual satisfaction; their accounts often describe cues that suggest that the woman had an orgasm.
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Indeed, in at least some indoor venues, the workers
expect and request
such reciprocal behavior from clients as a routine part of the encounter.

Similarly, social interaction is more multifaceted indoors than it is on the street. Encounters between call girls and their clients involve a complex and “elaborate interplay of social, sexual, and psychological behavior.”
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Most of the 75 call girls and 150 brothel workers interviewed by Diana Prince believed that “the average customer wants affection or love as well as sex,”
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and another study of call girls discovered that “for many men, sex is the pretext for the visit, and the real need is emotional.”
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In these cases, social intercourse is at least as important as sexual intercourse is. This multifaceted “connection” has now become known as the “girlfriend experience” (GFE) and the analogous “boyfriend experience” (BFE) offered by men to women or to other men. This GFE/BFE is especially likely when a regular client gets to know a provider over the long term, but it is also available in more short-term engagements. When clients in one study were asked about their motivations for buying sex in an indoor venue, a majority selected “like sex workers’ company” (60 percent of clients in brothels, 78 percent of clients of call girls), and similar majorities selected “able to talk frankly with sex workers” as one of their reasons for visiting brothel workers (62 percent of their clients) or call girls (69 percent of their clients).
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Christine Milrod
asked a sample of 567 clients who had accessed sex workers through the Internet about the desired characteristics of a GFE service provider: 76 percent wanted someone who was “romantic and tender toward the client,” 73 percent said she should have a “happy and cheerful personality,” and 64 percent valued “enthusiasm in trying a variety of sexual activities.”
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Unlike the streets, therefore, indoor encounters can offer a semblance of romance, friendship, or companionship—better thought of as
paid dates
than paid sex. The fact that some indoor workers (escorts) go out to dinner with, receive gifts from, and travel with clients—unheard of on the street—also symbolizes a radically different kind of relationship than one reducible to sheer monetary exchange.

The GFE concept has now gained legendary status. In 2009, the motion picture
The Girlfriend Experience
appeared, directed by mainstream movie director Steven Soderbergh and featuring adult-film star Sasha Grey in the lead, escort role. Escort agencies and independent call girls increasingly advertise nonsexual services, with many websites now trumpeting providers’ expertise in delivering a GFE. Some escort agencies even include a code of etiquette in their contracts, instructing employees, for example, to cuddle and to avoid rushing the client.
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In a sense, the customer buys a kind of
relationship
with an escort rather than just sex—one that may evolve over time into a genuine emotional connection, albeit one that is paid for.
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And this kind of relationship occurs among male escorts and some of their clients as well.
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For agencies, providers, and clients, the GFE—both its marketing and its enactment—may help to partially normalize the profession and mitigate the stigma of prostitution insofar as it can be associated with valued emotional dividends. The Emperor’s Club escort agency, for instance, billed itself on its website as offering a GFE that would make life “more peaceful, balanced, beautiful, and meaningful.”

Elizabeth Bernstein argues that the GFE has expanded from its previous niche market to prostitution in general and that customers are increasingly seeking this kind of experience. She claims that paid intimacy and other nonsexual services are “historically unprecedented” and “unique” to the present era,
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but the evidence for this is thin. Historical studies show that brothels in the past offered more than just sex and thrived on a variety of entertainments and leisure activities. For instance, in 19th-century America, top-tier brothels offered patrons musical entertainment, drinking, and casual mingling with women in the parlor prior to bedroom activities. In China at the same time, men visited brothels “to listen to music and join in socializing; sexual intercourse, although available, was not yet the
major focus of activity and was portrayed as part of a romantic encounter rather than as a thoroughly commodified activity.”
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Sex with a courtesan was possible only after a protracted period of courting her and building an emotional bond.
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Similarly, the clients of 20th-century call girls have long sought emotional intimacy. A large study of call girls and their customers four decades ago provides plenty of evidence of affective bonding at that time. As the researcher, Martha Stein, writes, “For many of the regular clients, talking about their problems or confessing secret worries was a crucial part of the transaction. … The call girls were skilled at sensing just how the client wanted to be treated and at encouraging him to express his real needs.”
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In short, the desire for companionship, nonsexual intimacy, and a semblance of romance is hardly new to sex work. What has changed is the
marketing
of this kind of experience and the creation of a new
label
for it. Its apparent novelty is simply a function of greater documentation with the advent of the Internet and website postings. And it is also important to note that some indoor liaisons lack the GFE entirely. Some clients are seeking a fantasy sexual tryst with a “bombshell” or a succession of partners who are valued for their physical attributes and sexual techniques rather than for anything nonsexual.

Data from websites shed light on what happens indoors. In addition to those sites on which workers advertise (listing services and prices, biographical sketches, and photos), other sites contain message boards for clients and providers.
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These sites offer a forum where novices can learn from seasoned clients and find information on what to expect regarding prices and services; reviews of a specific worker (appearance, demeanor, performance); location of establishments; and information on local police activity. The sites provide unique insight into customer beliefs, justifications, expectations, and behavioral norms—dimensions addressed only partially in previous studies based on interviews and surveys. Reviews of individual providers range from derogatory to lukewarm to those that lavish praise and offer enthusiastic recommendations to other clients. Many of the cyber exchanges also discuss appropriate and inappropriate behavior toward sex workers—chiding misogynists, those seeking underage workers or unsafe sex, and other wayward individuals. We are witnessing, in other words, an emergent subculture with its own etiquette and code of ethics.

Reviews of postings on these websites coupled with interview data indicate that many clients of indoor workers seek much more than sex.
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They place a premium on the provider’s being friendly, affectionate, attentive, and generous with time; having good communication skills and rich life experience;
and being willing to engage in cuddling, kissing, and sensual massage. These desires are not confined to a few men: they were pervasive themes in an analysis of more than 5,000 client reviews of 2,661 escorts in Britain, where customers’ online entries focused more on the GFE and the workers’ personalities than on their physical attributes or sexual performances.
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This is confirmed in Milrod’s survey of clients sampled from The Erotic Review website: when asked to select from a list of “the most attractive characteristics” of an Internet sexual-service provider, 70 percent of the men chose “they act like girlfriends and not like prostitutes at all,” 81 percent selected “happy and cheerful personality,” 62 percent liked them because they are “romantic and tender toward client,” while 76 percent also valued the physical dimension, selecting their “beautiful and healthy appearance.”
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Interviews with the clients of indoor workers highlight the premium they place on an encounter that offers intimacy, a desire for “rapport, chemistry, passion, connection.”
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Frequently, the men wax affectionate, recounting being treated “lovingly” or calling the companion endearing names such as “honey” or “sweetie,” just as a boyfriend or husband might do. Of course, not all clients are seeking intimacy, but many “do not separate sex from emotional connectivity with sex workers.”
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This is especially true for regulars, who visit the same provider multiple times.

Sex workers echo these sentiments. As Ann Lucas concluded from her interviews with escorts, “for many men, sex is the pretext for the visit, and the real need is emotional.”
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For these men, the encounters are much more therapeutic than carnal. One escort says, “Most of them are looking for someone who will listen to them and who makes them just feel special. … They just want companionship … to spend time with a woman.” When she embraced one client, he broke into tears and told her it had been a year since anyone had hugged him.
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As police detective Angel Batista on the Showtime television series
Dexter
remarked after being caught trying to buy sex from an escort, “I’m a divorced cop, a divorced alcoholic cop. And I needed to fight that loneliness. So I found affection any way I could. I needed to connect with someone, anyone who wouldn’t hurt me back no more.”
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Whereas a conventional date may result in rejection or other kinds of “hurt,” Angel viewed the paid encounter as less emotionally hazardous.

For some clients, a GFE/BFE has a limited, strictly sexual connotation and involves French kissing, mutual oral sex, unlimited touching, and sex without a condom—all of which may help them forget that they are paying for sex. But generally the concept has a broader meaning, centered on an emotional connection or romantic sex. Consider this client’s online posting:

This was the single most amazing session I have ever had with an escort. For some reason, and I’m not sure how she pulls it off, it felt completely—at every level, emotionally and physically—as though I were with a girlfriend who knew my every quirk, like, and dislike. It didn’t feel like sex. It felt like making love. Even leaving, I didn’t feel as though I had visited an escort. This lady works magic.
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For these men, emotionless sex is defined as “bad sex.” Revealingly, one of the rating options available to clients who review escorts on The Erotic Review website is “I Forgot It Was a Service”—illustrating again how the GFE may trump the economic dimension and decommodify the encounter from the client’s perspective. It is significant that many indoor clients talk about “making love” instead of “having sex” with their provider.
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And a provider’s willingness to kiss, to receive oral sex or manual stimulation, and to engage in mutual fondling and cuddling are some of the “indicators” clients use in constructing their experience as lovemaking. Such reciprocal acts help to convince the man that the sexual encounter is an authentic one, going beyond a commodified transaction. A man who performs oral sex on a sex worker can construe this as a genuine act of “giving back” rather than simply “using” the provider’s services. Of course, this does not mean that the sex worker necessarily experiences such client behavior as pleasurable; this naturally varies across providers.