How I Left Escort Work and Rebuilt My Life in Auckland
A young woman contacted our editorial team because she wanted to share her difficult story. We are publishing the account of a former escort girl who managed to leave this difficult business behind and completely rebuild her life.
Leaving Home and Starting Over in Auckland
My mother raised me on her own, and from early childhood our relationship was built around punishment. For example, if I got a bad grade, she could throw me out of the house for the entire night. When I was 16, I kissed a boy for the first time, and around the same time I had another allergic reaction and developed spots all over my body. My mother decided they were hickeys, so she started telling me that I was behaving like a call girl. Apparently, when someone keeps calling you something, you start believing it yourself. After all, your mother must know better.
I was studying languages and literature at university in my hometown. Then everything seemed to fall apart at once: I got sick, a boy broke my heart and, as it turned out, had also been seeing my friend at the same time, I failed several courses and eventually dropped out of university.
Things with my mother became so terrible that one morning I walked up to her bed holding an axe, wanting to kill her. Crazy thoughts were running through my head about where I could find a hole and how I could bury her body without anyone noticing. But I came to my senses and realised that wasn’t the answer.
I decided to leave, for Auckland, of course, because I thought everything would work itself out there. I had no money and didn’t know anyone, but honestly, by that point I didn’t care because staying at home simply wasn’t an option.
Before I left, I called an advert offering “high-paying work for girls”. I was 19 at the time and had almost no sexual experience, just one sexual encounter. “Boss Sasha” met me at the bus station and immediately drove me to a parlour, an apartment not far from central Auckland.
Together with his girlfriend Tanya, a striking brunette who charged a lot, around NZ$600 an hour, we chose a dress for a photoshoot so that the retouched pictures could later be uploaded to a specialised website.
Tanya brought me my first client, an old friend of hers. He asked me to caress him, and at the time I knew absolutely nothing about the finer points of it all. I started stroking his head, but he didn’t appreciate the joke and told Tanya to teach me how to do it properly. She took a banana and demonstrated how to give a proper blowjob, then started telling me off for not admitting that I had no experience. Honestly, it was pretty funny.
What Life Inside an Auckland Parlour Was Really Like
A parlour is an apartment with several rooms where escort workers work under the supervision of one woman. The girls either meet clients on outcalls or see them there. The parlours are run by older men who usually have other businesses as well. There are dispatchers who answer the phones.
If a client comes to the apartment, he goes to see a particular girl, while other escorts may be seeing clients in the rooms next door. There was a listening device in every room: the boss could call the device’s number and listen over the phone to what was happening inside.
My rate was NZ$250 an hour. I got half of that, NZ$125. I had between two and five clients a day, so it added up to quite a lot of money. But it’s very hard, dirty money that slips through your fingers. I don’t know what the secret is, but girls who go into it to make money end up with health problems, and that’s about it.
There was also a system of fines in the business. We were constantly monitored, and if, for example, we kept all of a client’s “tip”, we’d be fined because we were supposed to give half to the boss. You could also be fined for not wearing makeup, for refusing to work a shift and for other little things. That’s why the turnover was so high.
You very rarely meet a genuinely good girl in this line of work. Almost everyone has a nasty side to them. But generally, the people in it are very different.
We had girls who came from other cities to make money and told their mothers they were going away on holiday with friends. There were older women too. One of them, for example, had a law degree and had been doing the job for quite a long time. Most of the girls were between 18 and 35.
Some of the sex workers were also the bosses’ regular girlfriends, and they ended up having long-term, serious relationships with them. One of them told me she loved the man and even enjoyed having sex with him. Of course, the bosses also had families.
We had one girl who had sex without a condom and charged three times the normal rate. She was kicked out because it was simply too dangerous. In general, any services without protection were considered a serious breach of the rules. But I only did the basics: protected sex with no extras.
I found the whole thing deeply unpleasant, and it feels especially disgusting when you’re trying to give someone warmth, to give something of yourself. But if you can have sex mechanically while thinking about something else, then you can, in principle, do the job.
Most clients are married men who keep things inside themselves that apparently they can only talk about with sex workers. They say, “I’m not like this. I’d be so ashamed if my wife and children knew.” And then they keep coming back, again and again and again… I heard it all the time.
A lot of them don’t even come for sex. They come because they want someone to listen to them complain about their lives.
The Moment Everything Changed
Before long, I decided sex work wasn’t for me. I took the money I’d earned and decided to rent a room. Some woman took money from me for the bond and several weeks’ rent in advance, told me I’d meet the agent at the property and gave me the address.
I waited there all evening, but the agent never showed up. I was broke again, so I found the number of another parlour online, and someone came to pick me up straight away.
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I worked at the second parlour for six months. One day, police officers arrived along with representatives from the local authorities. They were inspecting the premises and checking the owner’s paperwork. Somehow, journalists were there with them.
The bright lights and television cameras sent me into a panic. There were two of us there, along with the woman who had been left in charge. I begged them, “Please don’t film me. At least let me cover myself. My mother is very ill.” My mother really is ill. She has a disability.
The journalist, who was actually quite well known and whom I’d liked up until that moment, flatly refused to stop filming me. He was incredibly rude. Of course, I understand where he stands and where I stand, but the way he treated me was extremely tactless.
They filmed everything, including me begging them, and showed the most dramatic moments in a report for a popular television programme.
I wasn’t accused of anything myself: sex work is legal in New Zealand. The questions were about the people running the parlour and the way the business was being operated. But that didn’t make things any easier for me. My face appeared in a television report, and I knew that people I knew and my relatives might see it.
When I returned to the parlour, my belongings were sitting outside the door. For some reason, they decided that I’d tipped everyone off or had somehow been involved. They didn’t pay me the NZ$6,000 they owed me. But I still had about NZ$4,000.
My mother saw the report, of course. We had a very difficult conversation. At one point she started blaming herself for what had happened, saying that maybe she should have loved me more. But I don’t think she really understood anything.
I don’t know who else saw the report, but back in my hometown people started saying that I’d worked as an escort. Although I very rarely go back there.
After I appeared on television, I decided to stop doing sex work. But I didn’t have much money, and then my mother ended up in hospital again, so I started working independently, which means renting a place and seeing clients on your own. It only lasted two weeks, though.
One evening, a guy called and said he’d be there soon. It took him two hours to get there, and I had a feeling something wasn’t right, but I didn’t cancel the booking. I opened the door and saw the client standing there, with another man behind him.
Thank God they didn’t hurt me, but they took everything: my laptop, some of my money and a few other things. It was difficult to deal with emotionally, but after that I left sex work for good.
Building a New Life After Sex Work
I got a job as a secretary and found a flatmate. We rented a small apartment together and split the rent between us. Not long afterwards, I started seeing a man, and we’ve now been living together for two years.
Unfortunately, this kind of work changes people a lot. I used to believe in love, but now it seems to me that even ordinary men, men who aren’t clients, want exactly the same thing, only for free. My boyfriend isn’t obsessed with sex, though. Once a month is already great for us.
Honestly, I’m even glad we don’t have sex very often. I don’t particularly enjoy it because I can only orgasm when I masturbate.
He knows about my past because one of my former friends, whom I used to work with, told him about it. She sent him a message. He was away on a business trip and asked me to get on a video call immediately because he needed to have a serious conversation with me. My heart sank.
At first I denied everything, but later we met in person. I saw tears in his eyes and admitted the truth. He walked away to cry, then came back, hugged me, and somehow we just put it behind us.
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Recently, he proposed to me, and I can say that I’m lucky to have him because he’s very dependable. He also likes me without makeup, for example, and he likes it when we act silly together. He doesn’t buy me diamonds, but he pays most of the rent and is saving for a deposit on a house. He treats me well, and I suppose that’s love.
I’m currently studying screenwriting because I enjoy writing. I’m incredibly proud that I was accepted onto the programme. I also bake pies and cakes at home, and I have my own website. I get around 7 to 10 orders a month, and one cake costs about NZ$200.
I also work five hours a day as an executive assistant, mostly doing secretarial work. But I’m not interested in dealing with paperwork, so I’m hoping to find a proper job in my field soon.
It’s been two and a half years since I left escort industrie. I have some mental health issues, and I spent a long time seeing a psychologist to work through them. At first, it was very difficult to cope with everything that had happened, but now I just try not to think about it.