“You’re Insatiable”

Having sex for money* plummeted me into a spiral of sex addiction and a constant need for experience. 

@louijover

I was inspired to write this after a friend asked if my inability to “open [myself] up to the prospect of having a girlfriend” was triggered because I was “mistreated in a previous relationship”. The simple answer is no but it is far more complicated than that and maybe even a little taboo for the average discerning person. So here goes.

I have always been a very sexual person. I first had sex when I was fourteen. I had boyfriends in abundance during high school. The most traumatising break up I experienced was when Samuel dumped me on Valentine’s Day in 2002. He didn’t even have the gutsiness to tell me himself, instead he sent Kieran to run to me and shout it in my face in the playground at lunchtime. It was the Valentine’s disco that afternoon, who was I to hold hands and dance with now? I was heartbroken. It still haunts me to this day. Maybe that’s where my hatred for cowardliness stems from. Oh, Samuel. You are he who is responsible for all my complexities.

I was either fifteen or fourteen when I my tolerance for bad sex had been reached. My best friend, Rebecca, and I were fucking our boyfriends at one of their house’s. She was on the top bunk bed while my boyfriend and I were on the bottom. I was as outspoken then as I am now. Blunt, abrupt, to the point, and satiated with the ritual of moaning with “glee” as he tried to fumble with my labia and penetrate my clitoris. I demanded that Rebecca and I swapped lovers. Her boyfriend was marginally better, or at least, he had a bigger dick. Maybe that’s my love of swinging stems from.

I can’t pin point how I developed a love for dominance and degradation but I recognised that my Head of Year pulling me out of class to reprimand me turned me on more than anything than I could ever find scrolling through RedTube. I fully committed myself to the cause: excluded five times, forbidden to go on the ski trip in France, not allowed on the trip to Auschwitz, instead being made to sit outside his office and complete tedious tasks. Although it did give me something to wank over when I eventually got home so somehow it all seemed worthwhile.

When I wasn’t masturbating, I was in chatrooms and talking with “slave owners” in Texas on ALT.com. I told one local Master the exact route I walked from school to home. We played with the idea that he would kidnap me and one day I felt his presence in my shadow. I strayed from my usual path, and instead walked down a busy main road and scurried into the closest newsagents where I called my mother to come pick me up. I remember telling her I felt faint and nauseous. It wasn’t untrue. I was panicked and learned that some fantasises should stay as such.

And then I met Steven. I was sixteen and at the nightclub that was infamous for “underagers”. I had been going there since I was fourteen and grew friendly with the door staff. In hindsight, and looking back at old photographs from then, I’m not entirely sure how I was let in but it was before Challenge 21/25 and if it wasn’t for my teenage posse and the old perverted men who lusted after us, there’d be no revellers.

“I’ll give you £300 to fuck you if you can prove you’re sixteen.”

He was offering me money for something that I would have done for free. He was exactly what I wanted at that moment. Charming, older, experienced, a perfect one nightstand and a brilliant excuse to disappear. I said my goodbyes to my disinterested friends and escaped to his hotel. This “one night stand” evolved into a five year affair. I wasn’t so naive not to realise that he’d have a wife and a family but he was in my city every week for work and his accent was the same as my biological father’s so when asked me to call him ‘Daddy’ I knew that the wet between my legs would not be found if I was the ‘sweet, little girl’ that he liked to call me.

We were perfect for each other. We were equally perverse, taboo, and being 26 years my senior I relied and look up to him as a daughter would depend on her father. And him being an egocentric, he needed to be needed.

I spawned an imaginary friend so to have an alibi for my countless weekends away from home. Her name was Sarah, we met through friends but she lived in Edinburgh and my mum knew just how much I loved that city so of course I’d have to go see her every weekend. Little did she know I was in Liverpool, or Manchester, sometimes actually in Edinburgh, London one time and Tenerife another. He’d teach me to drink whiskey and we’d play Strangers in a Bar. We’d fuck all weekend, he’d made me squirt and come harder than any other boy my own age could ever dream of. And then there was the gifts: designer watches, underwear, jewellery, a £450 dress just because it looks cute. Sometimes cold hard cash too and I can’t deny I didn’t love it. “Spoil yourself”, he’d say.

Fucking was, and is, like cocaine to me. The supply creates demand.

One sugar daddy wasn’t enough to sustain my sexual hunger. It was inevitable really that I’d eventually get into sex work. I was obsessed with that famous call girl who was all the rage some ten years ago. I was impressionable and wanted all of the things: the money, the sex, the power. I liked conversing with men, humouring them as they tried to make me believe that they were interested in me as a person and not just because I was a young hot whore.

The money was a bonus. I was outwardly living the last of my teenager years as a sexually liberated, kinky woman, having experiences, and going to parties that my peers could only dream of and fantasise about.

It all calmed down (a little) when I started to date a woman and things looked to be getting serious. I still occasionally saw Steven, I was still occasionally “working”, I was still venturing to my local fetish club and I even dragged her to some of the bigger kink parties.

I loved her but I couldn’t omit my sexuality, not even for love, and I don’t think I will ever be capable of doing so.

Being in, what was essentially, a monogamous relationship saw me cheating and living out my hedonistic tendencies unethically and at her expense. It seems everyone’s seven-year itch is my five and last year we amicably made the decision to split up.

This last year has allowed me to find my feet as a singleton again. I can’t deny that I actively seek out “quick fix” conquests and I don’t think I will stop anytime soon. Everyone needs a hobby and while you may pass time playing video games, I fuck strangers. What began as a desire for experience has unfolded into a never ending chase for experience, and in turn possibly an undiagnosed sex addiction.

I have no idea how many people I have slept with but I don’t think the number is relevant. I am proud of my sexuality and will talk freely about it to anyone who wants to know. I may not live my life in a way that is considered conventionally healthy but the pleasure derived from it outweighs the shame. I love love and I love sharing deep moments of passion and lust with similarly sexually liberated individuals. Just because we’re not “in a relationship” does not mean there is not the opportunity to share, to grow, to trust, to provide. Any relationship, given the opportunity, no matter how significant or not, allows change, allows process, and allows healing to occur.

Maybe one day I will grow out of this need to have everything, to do everything, everyone. Maybe one day I will get married, have children, and stop looking over your shoulder.

I’m 25 now and I can’t foresee myself slowing down any time soon, it all seems like a terribly dull and boring prospect for now.

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 *I am aware that this post has been published on a platform where I am not wholly anonymous. Many of you here know me outside of the realms of the inter webs and my sex worker past may be something you were not aware of but it is neither something I deny or am ashamed of. Sex workers are real people and there are more of us than you think. 

In the place where we live there are frames of times past, of memories cherished, slicks of spit and glue, of strong craft beads, of craft paper, fabric. There’s no sea. Landlocked, a lake swarmed with thick flies, our tongues dry with dil and ketchup, the open bathroom window which we always forget to close. Steal grapes from dry vines, barefoot and drunk, my dress transparent and slick and sour and skin in our teeth. The sky big, path narrow, laugh, lick. I drive into sheaths of sequin, paper dresses, spiked wood.

In this town where we live or won’t live, there are children missed. I think of my infertility. Cold heart, head strong. That’ll never be me. It makes me feel confused but lighter. You drive. You choreograph bends of the road delicately, smoothly. A road you’ve mastered. An art. I’ve mastered my art. Six years of highlighting cash with illuminating pens, two phones, who are we? 

In this town where we live, there are door knobs, silhouettes of our mouths. Lips tight and then wider, teeth close and then closer. Photographs, winter coats, and the sweat on the bridge of your nose in the Italian restaurant where we eat pasta with clams and worry about the future. We buy half of a six pack and trudge through the snow, wonder if it’s oak or maple, what makes us sleep, how can we be better?

In the town where I live, I assess every hour. I watch and observe, and speak unsure if you’re listening or not. I see you. Every part of you. I know you but you do not know me. 

In the town where I live, I visit the same coffee shop for the same barista who anticipates my order before I stutter over my words. I drink, sip, write and read, make scenes of real or fictional families, they argue and clink glasses of coloured water, juice, babychinos, table of stacked pomegranates. Fake family, real family. Pretend we’re always together. In town, pizza, £1 per slice. I have to pee. You wave from across the street in the dark. I insist on noodles. Pretend we’re telling stories, kick leaves, my mother calling. We look to our mothers and wonder. Pretend we don’t speak. Sweat behind my knees, worry about breakfast. How much do we have? Open our palms and show the coins there. My grandmother coming out from under the ground, pretend we don’t speak the language. Her frozen kitchen, naked in her big red coat. My grandmother at eighteen, at twenty five, at fifty five. In May just before she died, it’s exam week. Sweating and turning, and in her black blouse she said, “I’ve got a lot of moves.” How she never stopped dancing, how she never stopped loving. Scared and packed bags, moved back for her daughter, my mother, me. Always looking forward. Even on that last day, looking forward.

“Our plans are impossibly large. Our loves are impossibly various, and stacked, and broken wood, it’s always cathedral, almost now. Forget who’s listening and leave the windows open, and wear transparent clothing. You are magazine beautiful, we are California beautiful,” and the sky over where I live turns foggy. “Try not to notice luck or doorknobs, or all of the other signs.”

You’re naked and I want you. Packets of sequins and paper, glitter, kicked ketchup and the sun setting or rising. Which coast? Look faraway from the photograph. Maple syrup, £6. Let’s show dad how real we are. Without the dirty money who would I be? Smile for immigration. We’re careful to do things for ourselves. I want you to drive. We’re careful. We’re careful to be hungry, to love words like ‘lousy’ and ‘camomile’and ‘slick’, never ‘moist’. Count the steps. 34 or 5? I’m still hungry. I’m naked and unlocked, and then we give it all back. We’re naked and making adventures with our heads. Connected. We’re not afraid. 

We’re not afraid. Let’s never be afraid. Let’s never, let’s not, let’s never be afraid.

There are many ways to say a person has died, but no good ones. Today it is my job to be the bearer of unconditional news. I’m sorry your father has died. Would you like a cup of tea? I’m sorry your wife has passed away. Would you like her belongings? I’m sorry your son didn’t make it. Would you like the certificate? I feel redundant, hopeless, numb.