From the Mailbag

Dear Matisse,

I occasionally peruse the escort ads and use their services. However, I am really looking for a specific service (it’s nothing too weird) but have often been disappointed because I didn’t really get what I wanted. I’ve sometimes tried to ask but the girls I call are always hesitant to talk about their services for fear I’m a cop or part of a sting - which I completely understand. How do I broach the subject and find out if I can get what I’m looking for before setting up an 'encounter'?

You can’t. Not if it involves asking for anything illegal. People ask me this all the time, on both sides of the equation, and it always sort of puzzles me. I recall a young escort getting really upset with me because I “wouldn’t” tell her the proper way to inform a prospective customer that she’d do sex for money. The proper way meaning: a way that was completely clear to the client, but a way in which no police officer would know (or be able to prove) what she meant. She refused to believe me that I didn’t know of any such way.

There are certain terms and phrases, of course. But vice cops are just as up on code words and jargon as sex workers and their clients - that’s their job, after all. And if there was some easy and reliable word game you could play to get around the laws, the laws wouldn’t be much good, would they? Not that they are terribly effective as they stand. And not that I agree with them for an instant. But one has to deal with things as they are, not as one wishes them to be.

There are escort review boards, of course, although you shouldn’t believe everything you read there. And you should assume that cops read those boards, too.

So, no, there is no risk-free way to negotiate illegal services with a stranger. If you do that – and lots of people do – you do so at a certain level of risk. Is it a big risk? When you look at how many people, on both sides, who engage in sex for money each day, versus how many of those people get arrested, you could say the risk is relatively small. Of course, if it’s you who gets busted, it’s not going to matter that you’re the exception to the rule.

You do have my sympathy in your dilemma, but the only advice I can offer would be: you can either spend the money to shop around until you meet someone who does what you’re looking for and stick with her, or you can hunt for cheap airfares to Nevada, where prostitution is legal. In the meantime, stop voting for law-and-order conservatives who promise to “clean up” crime, because this is the dirty stuff they’re talking about.