A John I Know

there is a man i know who is charming, easy on the eyes, and fun to hang out with. by most people’s standards and accounts, A Cool Guy.

he loves to visit strip clubs and book escorts, and he specially likes strip clubs where many dancers are happy to provide escort services in-club or out.

he prefers ‘brasileiras’ and ‘asian girls’, and his notion of what those categories constitute is exactly what you think it is.

he has made friends with many escorts, a slight majority of whom are/were in the business to earn enough to never have to go back to the men that beat/cut/raped them.

he often says he is aware of the game and its rules, and expects nothing more than a lady will provide for his cash money.

he is married, Catholic and can count intimacy with his wife in biannual increments. she will not except under duress, and then never without being almost fully dressed.

he never questions this situation, never tries to talk to his wife about how they could have a healthy, more fully Christ-modelling marriage. they never talk about Catholic views on marriage and sex within marriage. perhaps his wife is unfair, but he never asks her about the situation.

he started visiting clubs and escorts after a year of refusals.

is a year too much to honor your wife and love her as Christ loved the Church? is a year without sexual contact enough to break the marital covenant with suffering woman after suffering woman?

i know the girls he visits too. not all of them, but some of them. they have other customers like him. not demanding in some ways, but yet– always looking for the next girl to book, even if he books you ongoing every few months.

and he is the one who brings up the frigid and so Catholic wife, as if her religion is the problem. he never attends Mass or confesses, never speaks with his wife about her faith. but somehow she is the reason he has to book his latest brasileira or Asian girl.

somehow she is the only one in the marriage who has done wrong. the only one who can be blamed for the brokenness, the lack of conversation, the lack of sex, the minimal remnants of marital connection.

somehow he is innocent and sexwork must be wonderful, because without women selling themselves to him, he would be in a sexless, unhappy marriage, not having sex regularly. but the girls give him the sex and/or the sensual dancing, so he doesn’t have to concern himself about the girl he married and has broken faith with.

i don’t know the wife. i don’t know if she hates sex, or was taught poorly about sex, or if she is waiting for him to love her. i don’t know anything about her side of it.

i just know the john. i just know the girls he hires and what they say about him. and i know what he’s said to me in a subtle attempt to get me to sell myself as an escort outside of the club because he’s such a cool, undemanding guy. who hopes a little that i’m just doing this because my man beat me once too often and i had to cross the waters to come to america and earn enough to retire in my home country, since american dollars go so far in brazil, thailand, laos, china…

or did. things are changing now. from what i understand from girls who still see this john, he comes around less, and books less. as do many of their johns. american dollars are not so golden anymore.

i hope he is trying to reconcile with his wife, but i know better.

he is trying the cheaper girls, who say a lot of things in many accents for fifty bucks, or thirty, or twenty, and it all goes so fast, he’s had his fun and she’s got her money.

and i wonder if he’ll have a new set of beliefs about those girls, to justify never considering his wife for intimate moments.

probably not. he will probably consider himself wonderful because he gives sixty on a fifty dollar bj and anyway, she is just doing it to get away from her man who cut her, and that’s why she has the scar and is working this corner to save up money to get away.

he is just one of many johns i know.