This is a final blog post, by my friend, Clio the ex-whore, recently retired.

Retirement only sort of suits me.

Only a couple of weeks ago an ex colleague and I were reminiscing over a few cocktails. We don’t miss it, we said, isn’t great to have a straight job and be proper respectable women again, with regular work hours and no secrets. Half an hour later, it was like this: oh god how we miss it.

We miss the dressing up, the sometimes awesome sex, the excitement of not knowing who was going to walk through the door, the humour and charm of it all. We miss the churn of the washing machine, which is the true sound of the fully functioning brothel.  We miss sharing a mirror with three other girls like we were juniors in the chorus line, and the four minute showers. We miss people we didn’t even know we would meet, let alone befriend. We miss the crazy shit. We are so bored now. Bored and broke. And bored. We should so go on the road and tour. We should so go back to it… But we kinda know we won’t. So we just put it down to the cocktails.

There are times I get a call or text from a previous client, and I am tempted back by a nice male voice and the offer of something fun and a little unique. I know a few ‘semi retired’ sex workers who keep on a few special clients, mostly for fun and company.

You could make an argument that every young woman should be a sex worker for a year. (See Amber’s previous posts on this here, here and here!) What would she learn? She would learn a bit about how men think, and she may well see them in a more sympathetic light. She would learn about her own sexuality and how to please and be pleased. She would learn personal grooming, time management, business skills, caregiving, ethics, the law, and most of all psycholology. I don’t mean psychology, although that is useful too. I mean psycholology – thinking tricks, coaching and advice, empathy, listening, being interested, sharing laughter and pain and affection. Just the ordinary good stuff about getting on among other humans.

If I ran a course on training sex workers (imagine that at your local college! A BA in Hooking!) I would teach all these things, along with Shakespeare. All my students would do Shakespeare 101. Shakespeare knew everything about human nature. 

So Clio moves on. I have some plans and here is a Shameless Self Promotion: I have always tried to infuse my sex work with my spirituality. Now I am studying Urban Tantra. I wish to work with individuals and couples to help heal and communicate, and discover the ecstatic, sexual self.

I also blog under the title Syrinx: my latest entry is about Donald Trump, where I defend the art of the golden shower (while not at all defending Trump, I might add).