Like many sex workers, Brigid was a goddess of contradiction.

I do believe that, to a degree, due to the nature of the job, all hookers are slightly crazy.  That’s because, among the many other crazy-making issues, the one that is the most anxiety-inducing of all is that no matter how open about what we do, we have to live a lie.  Whether or not we’re lying to the neighbours next to our brothel, who think we’re a house of busy female flatmates with an active social life, to our possible employers in job interviews, or to our family or to the parents of our children’s friends, we can’t be open with absolutely everyone about what we do or have done, no matter how successful we have been.

Some people are open about their identity, happily showing their faces in their ads and living openly as sex workers, and they may be living less of a lie than others, but mostly as sex workers, just like our clients, we hide behind huge fabrications of who we are and how we live, and this is a cause of anxiety as lying through our teeth makes us all a little bit batty.

When I was a sex worker in Australia, I knew a foreign exchange dealer who worked nights to coincide with days in other parts of the world, and this was the front I hid behind to disguise my night shifts as a hooker.  I wasn’t pretending to work as a trader or anything like that but I told people I had some other mysterious position (the tea lady?) in a bank of that sort.  My friend tried to fill me in on what happened there but as the concept was beyond my understanding, it was lucky no one ever asked for more information when the question, “so, what do you do?” was answered with “I work at a bank which trades currencies overnight”.  Fortunately this answer was the cause of eyes glazing over and a quick change of subject.

And then there is the stories we tell our clients.  Where are you from?  Do you have children?  What kind of other work have you done?  Even, which suburb do you live in?  There is a story most hookers have cooked up for each of those questions and others we are confronted with.  Occasionally I tell the truth about myself, but never the whole truth.  Clients also lie to us.  Actually I would prefer that they do so.  When you’re trying to break the ice with a few general questions and you are met with an icy response or curt words which are variations of I don’t want you to know that, I often respond with a suggestion to just make something up.

With the whole GFE thing, I need something to go on with here, otherwise it’s not really girlfriend experience, it’s more of a john-seeing-a-prostitute experience.  I can’t really kiss and be intimate with someone I don’t have a story attached to, and I really don’t care what it is, so go for it.  For an hour in the room with me, be who you have always dreamed of being, and let me enjoy my part in it.  After all, I have mentioned that Amber is only a small aspect of who I am, and I am doing my bit, by not being my at home, real life self.  If a client wants value for money when paying for GFE, he should do his bit, and make like a horny boyfriend, so that the sex worker can respond and be his girlfriend experience more effectively, otherwise he may as well pay the base rate only and spend time with ladies who charge extra for kissing, hugging, oral etc etc.  Yes it’s crazy, but that’s the nature of the scenario.

Just about every hooker I have ever met has come up against grief because they have to lie about what they do to people they have a relationship that ideally they would be as honest as possible with, and have created elaborate explanations, some more plausible than others.  The old cliches working at the bar or being a receptionist or only doing straight massage at a brothel are so well used as alibis by so many sex workers, that there must be a lot of clients being seen by very few and very rich actual sex workers due to so many who work on the periphery doing non-sex work.

Some sex workers have to lie to their own partners, even after they have given up sex work, because this line of work is so looked down on.  Others are open with their partners who are sometimes not too happy with it, or claim to be ok with it, (but sometimes aren’t really) or whose honesty is then compromised as the partner then has to join in with the lie to their family, co-workers or friends about what their sex working partner is doing for work, thereby taking on some of the anxiety of the living of a lie and the stress of the possibility of all being revealed as their hooker partner could be found out, perhaps by a coincidence such as a client of the sex worker turning out to be a workmate or family member of the sex worker’s partner.  What a muddle!  (And not just the way I have written about it).

All this craziness gets confusing and even amongst ourselves there is a belief that hookers must lie to each other, because bitches can’t really be trusted.  I guess the suspicion is that other hookers might dob us in to our families, as some, truly the lowest of the low, have done.  This kind of information about us told to the wrong people, can really do a lot of harm, more to innocent members of the family than the actual hooker usually, although her suffering is felt as she sees the pain in her loved ones’ reactions to this newfound knowledge or maybe ties are even cut.  Hookers who have worked happily alongside other hookers have been known to report foreign working girls to immigration and write letters to the IRD about other sex workers, so it’s no wonder most are a little bit or quite a lot paranoid.  We tell each other, even our friends, lies about who we are because we don’t really know whether or not we can trust them.  It’s no way to live really being this mistrusting.  It’s enough to drive anyone a bit spare.

And what about sex workers lying to their children?  For the same reason that some sex workers lie to their partners, some lie to their children about what they are doing.  Surely this is understandable.  I have my own beliefs about how much and what to tell to young relatives.  Personally I think that if the decision is made to be open within ones family, it is not appropriate for children under 16 to know too much about sex work involving their parents for many reasons, one good one being that because it’s difficult for children to keep some things to themselves, their parent’s occupation as a sex worker may be held against them.  A good reason to be honest with ones children is so that if there is a chance that someone vengeful may “out” you, you have the opportunity to provide an honest account of sex work first with no shame and no blame.  And if or when the moment does come for disclosure, a discussion and full willingness to answer all and any questions that may be asked is imperative, as there are bound to be myths that need quashing.  But that’s just my opinion.  I have an ex-sex worker friend who is very close to her adult daughter, but she vows she will never disclose to her daughter her past involvement as a sex worker, as her daughter bitterly looks down on sex workers.  The thing is though that what the daughter doesn’t realise is that for a part of her childhood, some of her mother’s dearest friends who she was often left in the care of, were sex workers.