People always assume this job is just about getting naked and doing whatever some bloke wants. But after eight years, I can tell you it's way more complicated than that.
Most of my clients aren't buying sex. They're buying an experience, a performance, a momentary escape from whatever grind they're stuck in. Sometimes that means listening. Sometimes it means being someone's fantasy for an hour. Sometimes it means making them feel understood in ways their daily life never allows.
Take Michael, a mid-level manager from Carlow who visits me every few months. On the surface, he wants a young woman to make him feel desirable. But really? He wants someone to hear about how suffocating his corporate job feels, how his marriage has gone flat, how he's terrified of turning into his own emotionally constrained father.
The financial transaction creates a weird intimacy. They're paying for my time, which paradoxically makes some men more honest than they'd be in any other interaction. Money removes certain social constraints. It's transactional, but also weirdly pure.
Working in Waterford means I see a different slice of Irish masculinity compared to Dublin. More rural, more repressed, more complicated. Each client is a tiny sociology experiment.