A woman who dropped out of her graduate program to “devote herself to men” has revealed what she learned about relationships – and herself – over the course of more than a decade as a sex worker.
Charlotte Shane progressed from awkward webcam work to “erotic massage” and eventually to in-person sex work in 2005.
And over thousands of “dates” and at least one long-term working relationship with a client, he admits to growing curiosity about “the wives”: Did they know about their husbands’ infidelity? Did they have sex with them?
In his new book An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex WorkShe writes: ‘Death in bed was the excuse offered by clients who felt compelled to explain why they were in a committed relationship and also naked with me.
‘Hysterectomies, chronic illness, or resistance to a specific obsessive predilection were sometimes cited.’
Over the course of thousands of “dates” and at least one long-term working relationship with a client, Charlotte Shane confesses to a growing curiosity about “wives.”
In her early days as a sex worker, Charlotte experimented with wearing wigs, like Julia Roberts’ character in Pretty Woman.
If the fetish was “easy to satisfy” – such as foot worship – she encouraged the man to talk about it with his partner (archive image)
If the fetish was “easy to satisfy” – such as foot worship – she encouraged the man to talk about it with his partner, to give her a chance to participate. But often the man was too embarrassed, or too easily put off by the slightest hint of a “no,” a laugh, or a disapproving face.
“Couples don’t have to share everything with each other,” she writes, “but this, for me, was an unnecessary loss.
‘On the other hand, no matter how harmless I thought the fetish was and no matter how effectively a husband conveyed his interest in it, the wife’s rejection could be absolute.’
As an example, he recalls a client whose wife had cheated on him with one of his friends.
As a result, the husband developed a fantasy about being betrayed.
“He didn’t want her to sleep with anyone else again,” she writes, “he just wanted her to pretend she was while they were having sex and tell him how inferior he was in comparison.”
No matter how much he begged her, his wife understandably refused to play along.
“I remember this man for many reasons,” Charlotte writes, “mainly because he was young and attractive and his penis was large, making it difficult to seriously disparage him.
Men, he said, were often too filled with shame to pursue their fetish with their wife (file image)
In An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work, Charlotte Shane reveals why many of her clients came to her in the first place.
As a teenager, Charlotte knew she wasn’t exactly attractive “when judged against the platonic ideal of attractiveness: Britney Spears.”
“But that wasn’t a problem, because looking at his erection and laughing fit the scene.”
Another client, an air traffic controller, wanted to participate in an elaborate role-playing game in which he was poisoned by his “wife” and, as he lay dying on the ground, she called her lover and laughed about how they would finally be rich with her late husband’s money.
“As far as I could see, he came in wearing trousers and fully dressed, lying face up on the floor of the hotel room. He closed his eyes as if I had removed a thorn from his side and thanked me.”
Charlotte’s love for men was sparked at age 16, growing up in small-town America, as she was drawn to their wild, boisterous energy and spontaneous, unselfconscious nudity.
‘They skipped classes, ran away, dented already damaged cars, jumped from rooftops and moving vehicles, sang loudly and shouted often,’ he writes.
‘They talked about circular masturbation, mutual arousal and size comparisons… they stripped regularly and abruptly for the sheer provocation of their own bodies; they wanted to make the girls laugh as they stormed the parties, penises wagging like panting dogs’ tongues, before diving into swimming pools or jumping on diving boards.
“I became addicted to their energy, their courage, their intolerance of boredom. They lived more deeply than anyone else I had ever met.
“Boys were synonymous with possibility. Possibility was the path to realization.”
As a teenager, she knew she wasn’t exactly attractive “compared to the platonic ideal of attractiveness: Britney Spears, the most superlatively sexy teenager who ever existed or ever will exist.”
However, she adds that it was this idea that she was somehow not sexually attractive that led her to sex work. In her early days, she experimented with wearing wigs (like Julia Roberts’ character in Pretty Woman), fake tanning and deep black eyeliner.
In the process, she says, ‘I saw that even without the embellishing accessories, an average body could be desired, or more than desired. Exalted. Longed for.
‘Some men on the webcam site drooled, obsessing over aspects of me that I thought were grotesque… and that was a startling revelation for someone who had worried about every potential flaw as a barrier to being loved, from the gap between her two front teeth to a half-inch spider vein on her calf.
‘But receiving devoted attention in person from clients who could see every bit of cellulite and touch every stretch mark and scar was surreal.
‘I was beginning to realise what an older escort later confirmed to me: you can look any way you want and charge any amount and someone, somewhere, will be happy to pay. Men’s tastes were so expansive, their range of arousal so wide. Why hadn’t anyone told me this?’
An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work by Charlotte Shane is published by Simon & Schuster