Just Between Us
Three different essay ideas have been circling my brain for the past couple of weeks. None of them had coalesced into anything, but this morning I had a thought while I was making my coffee – they’re all the same thing.
I am a no-review provider. This has been a conscious decision on my part. I thought about it for a while. Would I lose business because of this? Would people think I was some sort of scammer? Shouldn’t I be participating in this part of the culture?
When it comes to screening, I have only one method of screening which is a full picture of your driver’s license (or government-issued ID). You’re more than welcome to send a LinkedIn or references, but I will not accept it in lieu of a driver’s license (or government-issued ID.) This was also a conscious decision. But I wrestled with it for a while. Most everyone else accepts references, shouldn’t I? What about people who require extra privacy? Accepting references might allow me to meet more clients…but also network with more providers, shouldn’t I want to develop a community?
The word intimacy gets thrown around a lot in this line of work. (I’m not passing judgment, merely an observation. Marketing and branding and advertising require a distillation of your in-person self to a series of buzz-words to get picked up by social media algorithms and be optimized by search engines.) But seeing the word and various permutations of its phrasing over and over and over all day (“intimacy coordinator “etc. etc.) results in semantic satiation where I wonder “is intimacy a real word anymore?!“
I have nothing against references. I am more than happy to provide them for other escorts in NYC or elsewhere. While I do not love the concept of review culture, I understand how and why it exists. I do not judge escorts who want to receive reviews. I understand why testimonials might assuage doubts for potential clients. And while I do believe that physical touch and quality time are big parts of intimacy (and two important love languages for me!) I think there’s more to the story.
Intimacy is a concept that I think about a lot absent of companionship…the fact that I think about it so much is probably actually why I got into companionship. To harken back to my previous question: what is intimacy? Is intimacy just sex? Is intimacy just something that happens when you spend a lot of time with someone? Or, perhaps, must one cultivate the right attitudes and open-heartedness on their own so that intimacy can develop with whomever no matter how long they’ve known each other or how much time they will be in each other’s company?
I did a little Googling because I’m a nerd for words. The word “intimacy” comes from the Latin word intimus meaning “inmost, most secret.” The prefix int- is closely related to the prefix inter- which means “between.”
In thermodynamics, a closed system is a boundary. Things are happening within the boundary – an experiment is taking place, reactions are occurring, etc. Perhaps energy is allowed in and out of the boundary, but any products created by the reactions happening within the system, stay within the system.
There are things that move freely between the confines of our time together (our individual romantic histories, pre-date jitters, post-date glow, a vivid memory of the way you touched me that intrudes into the forefront of my mind at the absolute most inappropriate time) that we can’t control. But the date itself a closed system. Those reactions generated within our time together: how real life-Anna compares to the Anna that was living in your head for however long before you decided to take me out to dinner, how real life-you compares to the you that planned a night that swept me off my date and had me blushing for days, how when you touch that one place where my neck meets my shoulder it makes my whole body shiver with ecstasy, how when I look in your eyes you feel understood - no review or reference could have told us about those. And if they had tried…would we have believed them? And during every date, there are new reactions happening. New ways that we discover each other. Even if we met for dinner every single Monday at 7pm at Le Bernadin for an entire year, those would be 52 entirely different dates.
I am building off the energy that you give me. We’re having a conversation, I am not giving a performance. I don’t accept reviews because I want you to build a perception of me from your own experience of being with me. I don’t accept references because I want to build a perception of you from my experience of being with you.
Maybe that’s what intimacy is: trusting each other. Making yourself vulnerable to another person. I trust that you will take care of me. I hope that you trust me to take care of you. Two people who have decided to share their time with each other and let conversation and affection and tenderness move between.
And just between us, I’d really like to spend time with you.
Hi! I’m Anna Carter, a GFE escort in Manhattan, NYC. I’m originally from Atlanta, GA.