If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers. - Thomas Pynchon
I’m getting so many questions nowadays that I find myself stacking them months in advance (these were answered in late October). That’s just silly, so I’m going to start answering these individually in short columns rather than saving them up for the ends of months. If you have a question of your own, please email me at [email protected].
My girlfriend and I are interested in engaging the services of a sex worker as an ongoing part of our relationship. While there seem to be many online resources, we’d like to understand how to narrow down the choices to someone who will be of the high caliber (we are in Dallas). Any guidance on how to sift through all of the information to make sure we connect with a reputable person?
Living in Dallas has its advantages and disadvantages for you; on the one hand you’ll have more selection than in most cities and may pay less, but on the other hand you have many more names and profiles to go through. Unfortunately, due to criminalization it’s hard to be “sure” of anything in this business, but I have a couple of suggestions that will help you. First of all, make use of ECCIE, the most popular escort review board in the Dallas area. Find a woman you both like who advertises that she enjoys working with couples, and check her reviews; even if none of them are for couple calls specifically, that shouldn’t really matter because her friendliness, reliability, customer service and the like will be just the same for a couple as they are for an individual. If anything, a good escort will be even more on her “best behavior” with another woman present. Once you find someone who seems right to both of you, contact her in whatever way she asks on her website, providing all the information she asks for, and make sure you specify it’s for a couple. Don’t be surprised if her rate is a little higher for a couple than for a man alone, but it probably won’t be double (if it is you may want to consider someone else, because unlike dealing with two male clients, a couple is NOT twice the work). Let her know that you’ve discussed this together and you’re both game; you’d be surprised how often men will inquire about couple calls without discussing the matter with their ladies first! By assuring her that you’re not wasting her time you are more likely to start out on the right foot.
It’s possible that even if you do all your homework, the experience may not be as good as you wanted; remember, there are three interpersonal reactions to consider here rather than only one. If that happens, it doesn’t necessarily mean three-ways aren’t for y’all; it may just mean the chemistry in that particular case was wrong, and you need to try another escort. Have y’all read my two part “Couples” column? The second part gives examples of a nearly-perfect couple call, and a disastrous one; it may help y’all to gather your thoughts before proceeding.
You’ve often warned against people seeking escorts via Backpage, but what if there isn’t any alternative? My state is mostly rural, and barely listed on sites like ECCIE (if at all).
It’s not quite fair to say that I’ve warned people against Backpage; what I actually said is that if you really want to play it safe, maximize the chance of finding exactly what you want and minimize the chances of a run-in with cops, it’s probably better to contact only established, well-reviewed escorts. It’s definitely true that Backpage has a larger fraction of amateurs, set-up traps, scammers and low-quality girls, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some good girls there as well; in fact, most of the active escorts I know use Backpage in addition to the hooker boards, especially when traveling. In order to use Backpage safely you should probably avoid very young girls and those whose advertising seems to indicate a lack of experience and good judgment; vulgar phraseology is a dead giveaway, and very low prices are a sure sign of a scam. If the lady seems established but the ad is recent she is probably on tour, so try to find previous ads in whatever city she claims to come from. Even if a girl doesn’t advertise on one of the review boards, that doesn’t necessarily mean nobody has reviewed her; check for that in her home city (e.g., “Heather from Backpage” or the like; if she changes her stage name frequently you don’t want to see her anyhow). Tineye is a very useful tool; with it you can search to see if her picture has appeared elsewhere, and if you discover (or even just suspect) that the picture is stolen stay far away, because that signifies either a scam or cops. Finally, trust your instincts and use common sense, and insist on talking to her by phone at least once for a few minutes before meeting; I always advise escorts to do that in order to feel clients out, and it works the same way from your side as from hers.
I’ve seen references to screening of clients from you and from escort ads; I gather it involves getting enough information about the client to be sure that he’s not a cop, but exactly what information is asked for? How does one “pass” a screening without also exposing oneself in the event that the whore is arrested, as in the Kennebunk case?
As in so many other cases, the answer is “it depends.” Escorts aren’t only trying to screen out cops, but rather any kind of dangerous or exceptionally troublesome characters. That’s why so many depend on referrals: other escorts can report not only whether a potential client is what he represents himself to be, but whether he’s unnecessarily rough, habitually late, prone to haggle or stand girls up, etc. For an escort whose primary screening is the checking of references, the necessary information threshold is really quite low: she simply needs to be reasonably sure that the man with whom she’s dealing is the true owner of the alias to which the references refer. Most simply assume that he is, which is a safe assumption in the vast majority of cases (but obviously doesn’t preclude cops managing to pressure him into turning over his information for them to misuse). Other escorts ask for much more information, possibly including work telephone numbers and the like; some will only see men who have been screened by a verification service such as P411. And a large fraction simply trust their guts, as nearly all of us did in the days before the internet had quite so much information on it.
When I owned my agency, I never kept records for any clients who paid cash; the only information I had for them was names, phone numbers and addresses on the day’s notebook page, which was shredded at the end of the night (and would have been shredded immediately had cops started pounding on my door). However, a client can’t count on that; most escorts and agencies do indeed keep records, sometimes very detailed ones. So there’s only one real way for a client to ensure he can pass most screenings, yet not reveal anything cops or prosecutors could make use of: he must establish a consistent and unvarying “hobby” alias with a name, screen name, email address and phone number which he never changes, yet bear no ties to his real information; fortunately, prepaid cell phones and anonymous webmail make this easy. He must then find a few girls who will see him on instinct, use them as references for other girls, and thus build up a reputation. He won’t be able to hire every escort he might fancy because some insist on verifiable identifying data, but a well-established alias will get him in most women’s doors as long as he continues to treat every lady he dates honorably.
