There seems to be this collective fantasy that sex workers spend their days lounging around in silk robes, sipping champagne at noon, and dramatically applying lipstick while mysterious music plays in the background.
I regret to inform you that my real life is significantly less cinematic.
This morning alone, I:
- answered three work emails
- stepped on something sticky and chose not to investigate further
- forgot why I walked into the laundry room twice
- reheated the same cup of coffee four separate times
- and had a genuinely serious conversation about whether we were “completely out of ranch.”
Not exactly the seductive luxury lifestyle the internet promised.
The funny thing about people imagining sex workers is that they tend to picture us frozen inside a permanent movie scene. Somewhere out there, I apparently exist draped across a velvet couch at all hours of the day, effortlessly glamorous and emotionally unavailable.
In reality, I spend a shocking amount of my life trying to remember passwords and asking people in my house to please, for the love of God, put their dishes in the dishwasher. And honestly? Most mothers I know are functioning on caffeine, calendar notifications, and pure psychological resilience. Half of us are one missed appointment away from complete collapse at all times.
Motherhood is incredibly beautiful. It is also profoundly overstimulating. At any given moment, I am usually thinking about approximately fourteen things simultaneously. Did I answer that client? Did someone sign the school form? Why is the cat making that sound? Did I move over the laundry? Are we out of toothpaste again? How are there only three people in this house and yet somehow forty-seven water glasses scattered throughout it? I don’t know if motherhood changes your brain chemistry permanently, but I strongly suspect it does.
And the older I get, the funnier the public perception of my job becomes to me. People imagine the “secret life” of a sex worker being wild or scandalous, when in reality the true chaos in my life is usually trying to coordinate schedules and figuring out what everyone is eating for dinner. The least glamorous part of my job is not the work itself. It’s trying to look hot after spending an hour installing the latest update before I could actually do what I needed to do which is mostly googling things, carrying groceries, paying bills, answering messages, cleaning up after pets, and wondering why nobody in my home appears capable of replacing an empty toilet paper roll.
That is my real double life. Somewhere between glamorous and deeply annoyed. And despite all of it, I genuinely love the life I’ve built. The freedom. The flexibility. The weirdness of it. The ordinary little moments hidden inside a life people assume must look extraordinary all the time.
But if we are being completely honest here?
I’m mostly just tired.
☕ Charlotte