It’s been a long time since I contributed a column to this magazine. Four years if my boarding school arithmetic still serves me well. The reason for my hiatus goes by the name COVID, a name a lot of people would prefer to forget, but until about a year ago it was a thorn felt in everyone’s side. And it affected just about everything.
Including the sex trade, which I worked in for nearly a decade before gladly fleeing. But not before selling my sexting business for a pretty farthing or two. I now have a flat in London and help maintain my parents in Kent.
Despite my retirement, many kind folk still ask me about the sex trade and how it’s fared in the post-pandemic age. I have tried to give the editor of this publication, who graciously ghost-wrote my columns for two years, what I presume to call an update, while noting that I may myself be a bit out of date.
Another trend, though still in its infancy, is gender fluid dating, which may eventually push the business from strictly boy-girl meetups to something considerably broader.
That said, it seems to me all has returned to “normal,” as men and women are again making dates without mask and vaccine stipulations, which brought the in real life industry to a standstill for more than two years.
But major shifts occurred, and I think some are here to stay. All manner of sexting and online contact are now booming, and that is good news for sex entrepreneurs. I also like it because online sex commerce knocks down the need and number of women stuck in the awful maw of trafficking. Nothing will ever stop that heinous practice entirely but shifting the sex trade’s focus to online thrills is at least a tiny help.
That shift has unfortunately not helped Russian women, who, despite Russia’s near-total isolation, are still trundled westward, often in appalling conditions. I have hosted two, so I know the story all too well.
The problem for these girls is that they can’t send money home unless they turn over huge portions of their incomes to the very people who got them out of Russia. Their parents or relatives, often in on the scheme, thus get only a pittance. Some of the cash flows into Russia through Ukrainian mobsters in league with their Russian counterparts. War does not stop the sex trade. It just makes its operatives cleverer. And many escorts who say they are Ukrainian, in part to sooth the conscience of predatory men, aren’t that at all: they’re Russians using the best available disguise, playing the part of war victims.
“Innocent” Europe and the UK are flooded with these Russians in disguise, and no one seems to care.
On the high-end escort front, which I once made myself a part of, an increasing number of women (and men) are beginning to adopt the American model of intense screening before a date, including references and contact numbers, even LinkedIn profiles. In many major capitals, the casual approach – a call leading to a date – is disappearing. It’s a good thing, too, since it gives sex workers a far better sense of the pact they’re entering into.
Another trend, though still in its infancy, is gender fluid dating, which may eventually push the business from strictly boy-girl meetups to something considerably broader. Too many wants have gone unrecognized over the decades, which is why I find this trend a significant one. You may find the sex trade repulsive, but since it is not going away and never will, best to give clients broader options.
Though not all this can be attributed to COVID, the pandemic did certainly help people seeking lucrative commercial alternatives to traditional dating and hour-long hookups.
Sex work is the cockroach modernity will never crush.
As for those who call sex work repulsive and showered me with hate mail when I wrote my column, the underlying motive for sex work doesn’t change: money, and in many cases quick money. And no one in human history has invented an alternative to the sexual urge, or managed to keep male libido in check. This is why I tire of my critics and why, once I earned my nest egg, I extracted myself from the trade – though I still act as a consultant to the sexting business I started. Even now it amazes me what city businessmen and bankers, working at the hub of London’s commercial network, will pay for lascivious sexts to them hourly. The “illness” is called loneliness and there isn’t a pill in the world to cure it. These men may also be dissatisfied with their marriages but the underlying craving is for what my mother always called “a voice in the night.”
When COVID struck, many said the world would never be the same. They also said sex work was finished. People would be too afraid. Nonsense, I said. Nothing can keep primordial urges down for long. Or snuff out what is a business worth trillions in any currency you choose. Sex work is the cockroach modernity will never crush.
So how is sex work doing in the post-pandemic? Very well, thank you – with assistance from Steve Jobs. Soon I’ll be able to have sex with my phone. When that happens, well, let’s not go there – for now.
