Only in My Dreams
Some readers have asked what I am doing riding around Rome with darling Fabio or Renato or Renzuccio in a shiny Mercedes S three days a week.
Without mincing words, let me tell you. I am a hooker (ho, ho, ho) with a heart of gold. Priceless.
Three days a week I call the car service. They send me their deluxe model with a top chauffeur and I make my rounds.
Three days a week I lock away the “challenging” aspect of my personality and bring comprehension, warm eyes and smile, marshmallow softness, and a particular style of charm to my profession. The “mature” and “chubby” are always with me. What can I do about that?
Now you might ask, why would an American female with a college education cross the ocean for this line of work?
This is not the line of work I had in mind when I moved to Rome. I have had other jobs, many too boring to mention, but the comfort and consolation business is what keeps me active now.
I certainly couldn’t be the only Phi Beta Kappa who practices, either in Italy or elsewhere in the world. Mine is a profession that requires intelligence.
I might not have understood this in my callow years, but I know now that men are not just about the penis. Especially not the men I come into contact with. My clientele is graying, balding, well-to-do and well-mannered and sometimes they have a void to fill. Not just my void, but the void within.
They may be nearing or past retirement age and although they are financially secure, at a certain point in their lives the anxiety, a malaise, light or profound, is harder to keep at bay. They may fear the future and physical decline. Even more, they may fear themselves. They need the human touch, however fleeting, to relieve it. And that is what I provide.
Sometimes they talk, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they look me in the eyes, sometimes they don’t.
The boring ones will tell me their wives or girlfriends don’t understand them. The intelligent ones know better and never speak ill of the other women in their life. The most intriguing barely speak at all, and sometimes that speaks volumes. The best have a sense of humor.
The most enjoyable aspects of my profession:
a) I have no pimp to satisfy. I am not a kept woman. I am my own girl. I work only when I want to, by appointment, always at their place, not mine. This gives me plenty of time for myself, for my dreams, for my cats, and for my blogging, and I do not have to keep my apartment perfectly presentable. The domestic assistant cleans up only after the cats. Alone, within my own four walls, I am not a paragon of neatness.
b) The only entanglement is of the loins. There is no emotional baggage.
c) I never, ever have to fake an orgasm. I relax and let my natural empathy well up from its deep source. I feel my clients’ pain, their need, and respond. Some men need to be loved just like babies. Giving them comfort and consolation brings out the best in me, and the gratification I receive cannot be quantified.
My clients and I are at an age when our thoughts often turn to the “ultimate concerns,” and this makes us vulnerable. After all the thrashing about and thrusting and moaning and groaning, we might just lie quietly side by side for a spell listening to the sound of our breathing, sometimes holding hands, holding on to life. So, at the end of a tryst, there is always an element of sadness, and the mercenary aspect is not secondary, but wholly irrelevant.
