(part one available here)

The Agency

The agent was swift in his responses and I was soon scheduled for a one-on-one interview with him near the location that the other girls were having the photoshoot to update their profiles. I was loitering around the area of the hotel before stumbling upon a tall, thin and decent-looking man wearing smart casual. He looked as if he was looking for someone and we looked at each other, unable to recognize that we were looking for each other. Soon after we identified each other and confirmed that we did not get the wrong person, he started to ask me a series of questions that were not unlike a job interview in other industries.

Shortly after, I started working on my first assignment with this agency and at the initial stage; the appointments were easy to work with. But after a few weeks of working with the agency, I realized that the amount of last minute calls were increasing and my schedule was starting to revolve around mainly the appointments. What many clients do not realize when they make such last minute appointments are that as call girls, we need to have time to doll ourselves up and tidy our existing schedules which may not necessarily be work-related. From my knowledge of the local industry, the girls that are working in this trade are usually part timers instead of full timers as they are either studying or doing this part time to supplement their existing work income.

It started to get frustrating because I was constantly cancelling appointments with my friends in order to go to work and my social life was highly affected because of the work that I was doing. The saying that “sex trade is easy money” could not be more wrong after my first-hand encounter with how tough it can be to juggle one’s sex work identity and real life outside of work. Having a hectic schedule that I have to manage alongside with my school timetable was amongst the downsides of sex work, my health and skin was starting to suffer from the constant running around and tiredness of the odd timings and unpredictability. I worked with the agency for around a year and left when I got wind of the news that they planned to close down by the end of the year. Thankfully I had clients that genuinely liked me and I left with sufficient clientele in my pocket that will enable me to stay afloat if I were to be frugal enough.

Misunderstandings and Misconceptions

Speaking of frugality, I do feel that there is a common misconception that many sex workers in this trade are materialistic and money-minded. I would not deny that they are definitely sex workers that fit this category, but there are also sex workers like myself who works in the sex trade to keep ourselves afloat. There are definitely many different types of sex workers that work for different objectives during their time in the trade.

Other than escorting, which is a category of sex work that I tend to reach for more than the other categories, I also went into several sugar-daddy-sugar-baby arrangements which either failed or did not go past the first meeting. When I did my curation on Twitter for one of the curation accounts, I learnt that members of the public are confused with regards on what is counted as sex work and what is not. For instance, Japanese adult actors and actresses are considered sex workers but they are more accepted when compared to other types of sex workers. Reason being is that men and women view them for pleasure but they are not able to gain access to them unlike street walkers or brothel girls.

I pondered a lot when it comes to the question of why there are so many misconceptions and misunderstandings revolving around sex work. Then, I felt that the mainstream media’s style of writing sex work did not give it justice. The tabloids and expose news articles were not fair to the sex workers in the industry. Perhaps sex workers ourselves did not make it any easier for members of the public to come from an empathetic perspective of why they are doing the work that they are doing.

If there was someone, a sex worker who understood about human rights and the dilemma of the morality of sex work, maybe he or she can add into the voices of sex worker’s rights activists. That might just allow the members of the public and mainstream media to clear up the misunderstandings and truly take into account, the key problems that sex workers face.

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Scarlet Bunnie is a Singaporean escort and a part-time staff of Project X. She loves to sleep, make money, and explore different aspects of the sex industry. She shares her thoughts and ramblings on Twitter, and you can follow her @scarletbunnie.