Escorts

I wish that I was as blurred in my memory about the following six months as I am about how we chose the course of action that we did. I don’t remember actually having a conversation or making a pact to go into the line of work that we did. I simply remember our actions of doing it. We didn’t actually know what an escort was as such when we initially saw those ads. Although we’d seen Pretty Woman, she wasn’t officially an escort. She worked as a prostitute, or sex worker, on the streets. Her story was also one that we weren’t interested in emulating. Some of the ads mentioned companionship; dinners; conversation. None of them mentioned sex. I don’t know how we thought that we might be mature enough to be paid for conversation or escorting a ‘gentleman’ to dinner or other outings, but somehow we did. We contacted several of the agencies that appeared to be the most upmarket in their ads. However, we soon learned that although sex wasn’t advertised, it certainly was expected of escorts. As such, the money that we were told that could be earned was beyond anything that I had imagined so far with my limited experience of working in a bookshop or other casual work as a teenager. The lure of money can be a powerful motivator to those with weak minds and strong desires.

Although I was 16, I’m not going to re-write history to say that we didn’t know what we were getting into. Well, in a lot of ways we actually didn’t; still, we chose that route on our own. At some point before starting, both my sister and I – yes, as virgins – decided that we would provide sex in exchange for money. We thought, ‘How hard could it be? It won’t affect us’, and although I don’t actually remember saying it, I’m sure we may have said, ‘We have to lose our virginity at some point anyway’. From enquiring about the work, we knew that we had to be at least 18 years old. My sister didn’t need to worry about that, as although she was still a teenager, she was 18. I, on the other hand, was obviously not. Luckily – or at least we thought luckily at the time – no one asked for ID from either of us and when I said that I was 18 no one questioned us further. While experience has taught me that the price of virginity is high in that world, we didn’t tell anyone prior to starting that we were virgins. In our naivety, we actually believed that our inexperience may go against us and that we wouldn’t be accepted by an agency if we told them. We were open about being sisters of course. This would have been difficult to hide as we definitely had similarities of height; hair colour and length; eye colour; and facial structures such as high cheekbones. Some people even asked us whether we were twins; though we could not see that degree of similarity between us ourselves. Virgin sisters though? We had no idea that the commodity of that would have been so prized and sought after. I guess even then we were already becoming good at keeping secrets.

We attended interviews with several agencies, which were ridiculously intimidating. On each occasion, we met with the heads of the agency, and although we weren’t asked to undress at any time, there was certainly the sense of being scrutinised in regard to our appearance. The interviews felt far more formal than anything that I’d experienced in relation to a job interview. Although we were well presented and wore fresh, natural makeup, we certainly didn’t have the professional skirt-suit and stiletto look that many of the top agencies desired. That came later. We were teenagers after all – not glamorous or sophisticated model-type women. I actually think that I may have worn flats to our interviews, which was likely judged with disdain. We were out of our depth and it was obvious that they could sense our extreme youth and lack of experience in the field and life in general. They all, however, loved that we were sisters and considered this to be a major selling point for us. We didn’t fully understand what that selling point represented until much later. Still, while we were accepted by the agencies to ‘take us under their wing’, we weren’t sure that we felt safe in the concept of being on our own and going to a hotel or home to meet a man individually. We wanted to be together. This was despite each agency having their own security measures to ensure the safety of their ‘girls’. Some agencies provided taxi fares and others had private cars to escort the girls to meetings. Besides this, they also all conducted security checks on clients on booking an appointment; with girls also having to call once they arrived at an appointment to state whether they had arrived and felt safe.