She Sold Sex To Raise Money For A Flight to Prague
0 / 0 / January 7 2019

 

The interviewee’s name has been changed for safety purposes. 

 

This past year, Anaïs traveled around Europe during her study abroad experience in France. Along the way, she met a boy in Prague with whom she instantly connected. Throughout her study abroad experience, Anaïs realized she needed money to get by, as being a nanny and tutoring were not supplying her with a livable wage. After she met a boy during her spring break trip to Prague, she realized not only was she desperate for money but she was desperate to make enough of it for a flight to see him.

While searching through Craigslist for available jobs in France, Anaïs came across what she called the “freaky deaky” side of Craigslist. 

She came across the fetish posts, the “seeking young girls” ads, and everything along the lines of what might make some people uncomfortable. But Anaïs was intrigued. She wanted to learn more. According to Anaïs, she never had the intentions of selling her body for sex, but when she began contacting the men out of pure curiosity, everything became a reality. This is when she realized she could use her sexuality to her advantage.

I interviewed Anaïs about her experience as a temporary sex worker in a foreign country.

 

How did you meet this love interest?

A: We met at the park and exchanged names — not Instagram handles or phone numbers, just names. We hugged, talked, and even just sat in silence from, like 2 a.m. to 5 a.m., and I became consumed in him. He never left my mind for the next few weeks, so I came to [a] realization after this entire encounter that changed the way I felt about my current relationships.

 

How did you go about finding men to pay you for sexual performance?

I replied to the emails asking what the rates were, looking into what space they took place in, and I asked all the details before going into anything. I was strict and straightforward, I wanted to scare them off and act like I knew what I was doing, even though I had no idea. I told them we had to meet in a public space and told them my roommate would be in the area to watch — which was a lie, she wasn’t there. I just wanted to help their fantasies come true only to the extent of my own comfort.

 

Why do you think this intrigued you? Finding men online searching for someone to fulfill their fetishes?

It didn’t freak me out, it allured me. It made me interested because I always felt rather comfortable and pretty autonomous and free with my body. Weird things like stuff with toes, massaging, anything with money offers influenced me to move further. I cancelled out the ones that were scams, but a lot of them were real. I wanted to see what I felt comfortable with and what I didn’t. I wanted to explore that realm, and what better way to do it then while abroad in Europe?

 

Tell me about your first client.

We met at a cafe and he explained to me that he had a family but he comes to Paris four days a week for business. He was in his mid-forties, he had a fantasy and wanted to fulfill it for a long time. His fantasy was to simply be with a young girl, just to be a sugar daddy. It turned him on to pay a young girl for sex.

 

How did you feel after all of it happened?

It was very… factual… a that happened type of thought. Not exciting or unexciting, interesting or uninteresting, wasn’t boring nor was it fun. It just happened. And, um, so then in the morning, he left for work and I slept in. He left 120 euros on the table for me, and that was my first time getting paid for sex. I sat on the chair and smoked, and I was like hmm… yep, that happened. I just reflected on myself. One of the most interesting parts about it all was that I have never felt such non-existent shame. I felt no shame. No guilt at all. No regret. Nothing.

 

How was this different than just casual sex with maybe someone your age or someone who isn’t paying you?

With my casual sex relationships, the bar was so low because I had sex with these guys despite the fact that they did not drive me crazy. They were not interesting to talk to and the sex wasn’t even that good. Out of the 10 people I casually slept with, I would only sleep with 2 [again]. All of those [bad] qualities… but I still allowed them to have sex with me.

I was having sex for myself, right? But I wasn’t getting anything out of it. I didn’t like them as a person, and they didn’t please me sexually. I say I was doing it for myself, but I wasn’t getting anything out of it. I got nothing in return — not pleasure, not good conversation. It took me awhile of [having casual sex] to realize it was not what I wanted to do. What made this sexual experience so different was that I was not doing it for pleasure or fun, I was doing it for money. It was a job, not for fun. There was a desired outcome, which was money. My goal was getting money and I fulfilled it.

 

Did sex work change your perception of casual sex?

Girls do it all the time for free [casual sex], but are they getting pleasure out of it? Is it really worth it — what you’re getting out of it compared to what you’re giving? When you put a dollar sign next to it, it’s a different playing field. It’s no longer about your pleasure or time, it’s a clear goal. It’s just a job and it’s so simple.

 

What else did you do, maybe besides intercourse, while doing this work in Europe?

One other guy was a one-time thing. After giving him the lowdown about meeting in public and stuff I got his fantasy out of him. He made me comfortable and showed me the local police station by his apartment. His fantasy was to just be a watcher. His fantasy was to just look and not be able to touch — that is what got him going. I was in his apartment for an hour walking around, undressing myself. He was very polite, and he was not allowed to touch me. I made 50 euros, and he walked me to the metro after.

 

You mentioned confidence to me, when discussing this experience, how did sex work improve or possibly damage your confidence, if it did at all?

It was such a new experience and it was interesting because I got to learn about myself. What types of settings did my confidence come out? I could tell when I was shy in situations and when I was confident. When I left their place, I felt confident. It was a fun experience. I never got shy, my confidence came out. It was fun to test it out, you never know how you’ll react until you’re in the situation.

 

Did you have to put on a “game face” before going into it? Were you your authentic self or more so an actress in these situations?

Yeah, I definitely felt like I was acting. With the one guy that I slept with regularly, because I was not attracted to him — not sexually, not physically — I completely stripped the situation of everything besides seeing it as a job. I was not overly comfortable, but I was not uncomfortable. Before I met with him, I would play loud music and smoke a cigarette, and I called that “getting into actress mode.”

I felt like I was acting, it was like I got to play a certain part. This isn’t my everyday life, I got to play this part with him. I was not necessarily enjoying the sex, any of the times, I just wanted it to be over. I over exaggerated it, and as long as I was comfortable, I was fine.

 

How did you feel when you finally made enough money to book a train ticket to Prague, to reunite with your love interest?

I had my drawer that I put the money in, and when I got enough money for the plane ticket, I just looked at it like, There it fucking is, there is my plane ticket money.

 

Would you ever tell him [the love interest] about how you made up enough money to see him?

I think about telling him, I wonder how he would react if I told him that I did this to see him. If we got married, 20 years from now, I would totally tell him.

 

You said it’s been about five months since you’ve seen him, do you want to see him again? Would you ever sell sex again to do it?

Now that I know that we do have a certain connection, it just interests me to pursue it. So I would like to see him again, and he would love to come to America, because it’s so different. I’d love to show it to him. He elicited this part of me that, um, just makes me hopeful. In a lot of my past relationships I felt worn out, depleted, stripped down — not that they meant to but it’s just how the relationship went.

He does the total opposite, he makes me feel like I have qualities that I don’t even feel like I have. He just makes me hopeful about a bunch of things. The fact that him and I could fall in love — I don’t know — be together. [Makes me feel] just, like excited, interested, and hopeful. I can honestly say that the adjective “hopeful” has never [applied to] my past relationships, I could have never used it in those. But it’s one that fits here. So I want to be aware of that and I don’t want to forget that it was special. I don’t want to think that special things are special when I am tired and worn out, how cynical and sad to not give special things their special credit. It’s so beautiful when things are special.

 

So about the sex work, would you do it again to see him?

I think that I would sell sex again if all the conditions were met, and I felt comfortable. I think that I would just because I know that I can, and I would be open to another experience. However, I wouldn’t want to do it too much. I wouldn’t want to have a strict relationship that happened all the time based on that, because I do think sex can be very special and it’s fragile. 

I, right now, can bend it and make it about a job and about money but it’s really fragile because if you bend it too much then it’ll break. I don’t want to use sex only and attach such a heavy sole meaning of money to it that [I] start to not be able to put the other [romantic] qualities to it. That petrifies me.

 

How do you feel now, months and months later?

I don’t bring it up casually because it’s my private life, but I don’t feel ashamed to say [I participated in sex work] if I’m talking to a girlfriend about it. I would never want my parents to find out, but I don’t feel ashamed about that part of me. I felt this power here, because I did not have power before. It makes sense, in all of the casual sex I had before and relationships I had before, I did not feel right. In here, I controlled everything. How much I made, what time we met, I got to pick how I acted. It’s so much easier when you attach it to this other persona. It’s like, Wow, I can create all of this.

 

Were you ever paranoid or scared of anything bad happening to you? I know you are French and fluent in the language, but as an American girl in another country, weren’t you frightened to do any of this?

I think that I was naive because I told myself, “Okay, if I make it clear that we meet in a public place, I’ll be safe.” I get paranoid over the dumbest things, but I never got paranoid over this when it totally could’ve gone wrong.

 

Would you ever do this in your hometown [in the Midwestern USA]?

I think it might’ve been the fact that I was in France that I did it. It had this weird facade, fake idea of a blanket of comfort and safety that was imaginary. It was a different country, it was so easy to act like I don’t rationally do. I don’t know if I would do it where I live now, I’d have to go looking for it. And if it came to me I wouldn’t trust it, so the perfect balance happened in France.

 

All photos by Luo Yang.