Special People

Dear Mistress Matisse,
I am contacting you for some advice about getting started as a courtesan. I've been trying to navigate into this world, but keep getting lost. I'm wanting to get myself through acupuncture school, and I have this idea that I'd like to share my excess sensual and healing energy with a very special clientele...people who want what I have to offer. How do I go about finding my niche here?

Let me begin by saying your motivations for getting into sex work, and your ideals about how that’s going to look, sound lovely. Sharing sensual, healing energy with special people? I thoroughly approve of that idea.

Now that we’ve established that, let me correct you on some points, my dear little special snowflake. No one “gets started” as a courtesan. That word is not a job title, it's a professional accolade. Saying one wants to get started as a courtesan is like saying one wants to get started as a movie star or a supermodel. It is a status conferred upon a woman by the people she meets, and I for one do not say it lightly. I have met a few women I think genuinely merit this description. But not many.

So, you want to be a sex worker to put yourself through school? All right then, you must begin as everyone else in your job description does. I’m not sure if you want to do sensual touch (ie, massage with a happy ending) or be an escort. But I’ve written a lot about how to get started in all types of sex work, so search and ye shall find.

As for finding very special people? That too takes time, and a lot of careful sorting. Obviously there are people in the world that simply aren’t suitable. Then there are people who are harmless, but just… weird. But you know, for the most part, I would not wish away my meetings with the emotionally incomprehensible people I have encountered in my travels. They are educational. They keep you rooted in the reality that world is full of people who see things quite differently than you do.

Every sex worker deals with a certain number of clients who, whether they know it or not, are wounded in some way. The thing is: people who seek sexual healing are not always the easiest people to deal with. They are not always happy, or self-aware, or seemingly appreciative of what you give them. If this was easy, everyone would do it.

But if you never have a client who’s a challenge, you’ll never develop the emotional skills necessary to become a courtesan. I’ve had some amazingly satisfying sessions with people who initially did not make a good impression on me. You see, I consider it my job to find something special and likeable, something I can connect with, in every single person I play with. With people I click with right away, that’s easy. There have been times in the past when I’ve had to work really, really hard to see something special and likeable in a client. But - those were the people who needed it the most.

And when you really, truly do see something good in them, they can feel that, and they respond. That’s what a courtesan does: she shows people that they all possess something special, and by showing them that, she heals a little of the hurt done by an indifferent world.

So it’s true that you do sometimes just find special people. But in a certain sort of way, you have to be the one who makes both of you know that they're special.