"Wait - didn't he know what you did for a living before hooking up with you?"

That's the confused, am-I-missing-something-here question almost everyone has interrupted me to ask as I explained the first of my two nasty splits from the last two months.

The answer is that yes, he knew exactly what I do.  He knew before our first drunken makeout session at a party last summer, before our first date last fall, before he ever put his dick in me this spring.  In fact, he went on and on, profusely about how much he supported my decision to be a sex worker and how people ought to treat us with more respect.  He told me that my then-boyfriend was "classless" for having asked me to go with him to a work function as a "web designer" rather than a "pornographer".  He once even used the phrase "honored to help" when presented with a way to do something for the sex worker community.

You can tell where this is going, right?  It's like waiting for the punch line in the latest news story that begins with, "One of the nation's most prominent evangelical anti-gay activists was recently caught..."

This guy made himself officially my first split based on my job!  I can't believe it took me 8 years in porn to find - and copulate with - a guy to drop me like toxic waste for no other reason than fear of personal embarrassment about my work.  (I've seen other sex workers cycle through these assholes more regularly.)  I got the full bullshit parade.  "Look at me!  I adore and respect sex workers!  I'm such a good guy!  I can't lie to anyone!  I respect you and think you're wonderful!"  Until, that is, a couple of weeks after our long-distance half-year flirt-fest was sealed with several days holed up in my place fucking.  Ohhh... so that's what it feels to have a guy manipulate and lie his way into your vagina!

Here's the real punch line, though: the guy had his personal assistant do the dirty work rather than tell me himself.  Aspiring yuppie douchebags take note!  A girl will never forget that special first time when a man's personal assistant calls to lecture her about how his career is just too important right now for him to risk being publicly associated with a girl like her.  Kicking a girl in her most sensitive areas via text message is so lower middle class.  A true gentleman has an employee do it.

Or, if you like cruel jokes with two punch lines: he later did bother to tell me himself that he hoped we could still be "good friends" in spite of his decision.  Since we were never "together", I'm taking "good friends" to mean "I'd still like to put my penis in your holes when I'm in Seattle."  Honey, if you want to fuck sex workers, but don't want to be connected to them in broad daylight, that's not referred to as "close friendship".  It's calling being a paying customer.

Sigh.  And I was doing so well.  I'd only had one other asshole in the last three years, which feels closer to 30 in a sex worker dating years.

Split two was with the boyfriend, which was a more complex situation.  It was my longest relationship.  We'd been in this weird grey area for 6 months leading up to the final breakup in May, when I just couldn't handle dealing with his problems any more.  It called to mind an image of a dangerous attempt by a non-pro to rescue a wildly thrashing drowning person.

Both splits hit me hard enough to knocking the proverbial air out of me, but in different ways.  Thinking of suitor number one makes feel me angry and used.  Thinking of suitor number two makes me feel exhausted and sad.  It's resulted in my neglecting work and focusing on tending to myself, which means in an already recession-plagued economy, the last two months have not been too profitable.

One of the things I've heard many sex workers say over the years, as another is going through a breakup, is "invoice him!"  It seems to be one of our fallback jokes.  I've had half a dozen people implore me of that lately.  But, it's not the sex I want to invoice them for.  I wish I could invoice them for the less tangibly quantifiable degrees of emotional distress and subsequent distraction from work they'd both put me though this spring.  I wish I had something to show for it all other than being wiser in mate-selection in the future.  You can't take that consolation-prize sentiment and spoon it at night, or pay your bills with it.

I needed to get some fresh air.

I headed off to Mexico for 8 nights - unfortunately, though, not at the expense of either of the boys.  (I believe that people who drive you to necessitating stress-related vacations should be responsible for at least half of the cost, like an abortion.)  I'm now settling back in at home, but I had a lovely time on the beach in a rural part of the Yucatan.

I still can't really take much comfort in chalking it all up to experience, but at least I got a tan and some time to disconnect.