The Escort Dairies is a collection of interviews with the working girls of Auckland by Courtney Devereux. This collection aims to show the determination, strength, and character of these individuals. Nak-Ed fully backs these workers and their decisions and encourage girls to get in touch with the NZPC for any assistance and guidance.

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Abby (Working Name) –

 “It was nothing like I thought it would be when I first started. I thought all the girls were going to be on drugs and drinking every night, so I was more worried about myself and if I was going to get threatened by one of the other escorts.

When I first started it was a little bit more rowdy. There were these two Brazilian girls that worked there, I can’t remember their names anymore, but they were a couple. They worked together at the same time which I found really odd. They used to drink every night and have these massive screaming matches about clients.

One weekend, the smaller one of the two went up to do a job, and I was chatting to the partner out in the back room. She started being a bit weird and placing her hands all over me, then when her partner returned she was trying to obviously make her jealous, and I just thought oh god this tiny woman is going to beat the shit out of me.

One night, Both of them were just fucked, and probably should not have even been there. They used to yell at our madam (A manager of the escorts) “I’m not fucking coming out!” if they didn’t want to do a job, which is something you never do when there are clients around because is ruins the fantasy that we actually want to sleep with them.

The littler one of the two used to have these comedowns while we were at work, and of course when you’re in tight quarters with someone for twelve hours it becomes everyone else’s deal.

She would be a nightmare and she would look like shit, make up down her face and hair all a mess – like she’d been choking on cock all night.

I remember just thinking ‘clean yourself up for fuck sake’.

One night she offered to do my make up for me, which I accepted, looking in the mirror after I just thought ‘oh my god do they not want me to get any jobs tonight’. They gave me this bright eye shadow and red lips and I looked like I’d be better off with the street walkers.

 ***

It’s such a mind game in the club. You don’t know if people are just trying to be nice so they can work it to their own advantage, so it was hard to actually know who was a true person and who couldn’t be trusted. 

I started escort work in 2015, and was there just under two years. I was 19 at the time. I worked maybe 4-5 nights a week.

If I finished babysitting early I’d usually just taxi into the club and work the rest of the night with the girls. It was extremely tiring, obviously getting fucked all night in all the wrong ways is hard work. I made sure if I was due to see family or anything I wouldn’t work the day before, so I was well rested, wasn’t hung over or didn’t smell like lube.  

The first week was the hardest. I feel into a bit of a depression. I would come home at 8 after a night shift and just sleep, I would be starving but I couldn’t bring myself to eat because I was just so tired. It was draining and emotionally exhausting, and trying to hide it from the people you live with was an added pressure.

I was flatting with a few guys, and the guy that owned it was the best friend of my older brother. So I had to really try and hide it from him. Most the time I could pretend I was baby sitting, or just having a big night and I would tell people I baby sat for nurses and other shift workers. So being gone till the morning didn’t seem so suspicious. Getting ready at the club meant I would just leave in street clothes and change into my hooker clothes later. Luckily too, he was a bit of an idiot. So hiding it didn’t take too much effort.

***

You know that people don’t know because of how they treat you, they treat you different and usually worse when they find out. But you always have this thought in the back of your head that they’ve figured it out, so you are always a little on edge.

I was babysitting and working as a nanny while I was an escort. The hardest part about that was the juggling, but I could work four days as nanny or one night at the club, and make more money in that one night escorting.

After about a year at the club I started swapping to doing a few privates, so going to the clients’ house through my own network rather than the clubs.

It’s something I often dismissed because I was worried about security and being safe in a strangers house with no tracking of where I was or who I was with.

But I was thinking about it and in no way was that club a safe space either. They had one tiny intercom button in each room. If you were in trouble how were you going to reach it against the force of some really big guys? Not to mention they often took ages to even respond to normal intercom drink requests or just buzzed through saying “hang on a minute” and would turn it off before you could even respond.

They wouldn’t even hear you scream.

 With that, if we did manage to buzz down, by the time security could make it up three flights of stairs and unlock three key card locked doors, the damage would have already been done.

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It was when I was transitioning to privates that I met my current partner through a job, not that anyone knows that. One of the girls, Emma, who had started her own private network offered me a client of hers as she was busy. I asked her a little bit about him and she told me he had just gotten out of jail, and was staying in an apartment in town. His friend was paying for him to have a girl as a welcome back gift.

I was a little unsure, but after a bit of back and forth I decided I would because I really needed the money. I was going out that night anyway so I thought it would be handy to have a bit of extra cash. 

She gave me the money for what was meant to be an hour job, then she drove me there just to see if he looked gross or creepy, if he had then we wouldn’t have gone through with it. We would have just driven off. It’s easy to tell who is safe and who isn’t after a while.

However, he looked relativity normal and I told her I was fine to go ahead with the job. I didn’t think he was too cute to start, he was smoking a cigarette outside in a singlet and Nike shorts, it was mid-winter.

Emma had told me he was a good person to be in contact with, so be nice. I did the job and it was pretty standard, he wasn’t into any freaky shit. I guess after so long away it’s the simple things you miss the most.

After the job I did give him my number and said to him feel free to text me, I have a few different girls that work with me so if I’m not available I can find someone for you. I said I’d also be keen to show him around as he had been in jail for so long, a lot had changed. He went in when he was 19 and I came out when he was 30.

He stayed with me while I waited for the taxi which I thought was really sweet, and we were just chatting away about nothing.

Soon we had a back and froth going, he would text me and I would go pick him up and take him to the beach or show him different foods that had come out now.

I was just thinking of him as a friend as I had a boyfriend at the time, and he said he was just happy to have a woman friend after so long with just men. But every time I went over to his place he would just have massive bottles of my favourite alcohol just for me, or would go to his friend’s house and buy me a big bag of weed to take home.

He was buzzing out one day that I was a ‘normal person’ and easy to talk to, and I was like yes most escorts are just normal people. He compared it to the weirdness you feel when you see a teacher outside of school.

He said to me I shouldn’t have to work anymore, and I don’t know why because I literally never listen to anyone, but I listened to what he had to say and I started agreeing. I stopped going into the club and started coming up with excuses as to why I couldn’t work. And after a year of working there full time it was nice to not have to burden that came with a 12 hour shift in the club.

My partner at the time was a lot older than me, he was 46 and I was 20. He was really fucked in the head; his wife had died of cancer not long ago while she was carrying their child. All he really wanted kids of his own.

He had frozen her eggs before she had passed and was basically looking for someone to be the oven for that bun. He was convinced he wouldn’t never find anyone else.

We got closer, and I had always wanted a family. He started looking at me as the way to get the family he lost. I was okay with it at first, I thought maybe I could deal with that. But then he said to me I that he could never promise me my own child because of his age, and because that we’d have to do IVF like he did with his dead wife.

That was the deal breaker for me, I have always wanted my own child, and he thought it was okay that I would just have her child instead. I was at the park one day and I saw this old dad pushing his child on the swing and I though nope, I’m not cool with raising someone else’s baby.  

I ended up breaking it off with him, I told him I couldn’t do it. He became very intense, telling me he loved me and that I must love him, and I just didn’t. I liked him and he was a great guy, but the love wasn’t there.

The week after I had broken things off I started seeing the guy I meet through the private job, I couldn’t really hide those feelings after everything I had gone through, and we made it official a few weeks later. Then, it was only about two weeks after that I went to get a sexual health check as I was coming into a new relationship and as a worker you keep up with getting checked.

I came in after the test and sat down across from the nurse, I thought it was weird that the test was still sitting on the table. She looked at me, took a deep breath and said, “Congratulations, you’re pregnant.”

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Part 2 coming soon.