Erin on the "Industry Friend" phenomenon and various musings

She's Back

Yes, Erin my ex-WL friend is back. Both she and I have had a pretty shocking last 8 weeks or so. It is a pleasant surprise to have her wanting to come back and provide her thoughts. As usual, most of the words are hers and I only contribute a bit of editing/additional anonymising.

The "Industry Friend" phenomenon

I took quite a bit of interest in Curiosity's recent musings on the way many providers and punters "play" each other by pretending to be friends in order to gain sexual and other advantages. Those cases are relatively clear cut forms of emotional and other kinds of abuse. The phenomenon I want to discuss is generally not intended to be intentionally hurtful (at least on the part of the person actually practicing it on the "receiver") but nonetheless highly symptomatic of the inability of far too many industry participants to manage the sort of abnormalities imposed by industry participation that Curiosity and his friend Voyager wrote of. And being on the receiving end of such behaviours still hurt, let me assure anyone who wonders.

In my experience, the typical "industry friend" is a WL who develops a close friendship with usually other working girls and, occasionally, a current or ex client. This WL will usually genuinely value her friends as friends or at least intend things to be so. However, the intensity of the friendship and the WL's willingness to participate in the sorts of activities that generally maintain human bonds (things like meeting up for coffee, replying to texts/calls, and being there when their friends hit rough patches) is almost entirely or highly tied with the extent to which the original WL happens to be participating in the industry and be in need of practical or emotional assistance, company etc as a result.

Before anyone too quickly dismisses such people as mere "users" of others, do let me speak kindly of their good parts and offer some speculation as to why they may so behave. One typical "industry friend" that I have is May (ed: not her real or working name, obviously) and with all the things we have been through, I just don't believe she only uses me and others. May and I are (and were) both single mothers now and when we were both working - over the years, we've looked after each other's child, bought gifts for the children, and backed each other to the hilt when things go really south (literally giving each other lifts and other help at 3am etc). Only that these things tend to happen only when May happens to be working as an escort, which is about 70% of the year. When she isn't working, all attempts at contacting her largely fail to elicit any kind of meaningful response other than simple texts saying that she is stressed or need breaks but would be in touch. Even during my recent personal calamities, I heard little from May beyond one or two supportive texts.

Does that hurt? Given the emotional bond that undoubtedly exists between us and how much I value May's support and company, it really does. But do I think less of her for it all? Not really. Her behaviour is not a surprise given the way society is structured and that she has chosen a lot of the same "methods" to her industry work as most WLs that are equally emotionally, physically and mentally draining.

Forcibly defining ourselves by the sex acts

May, like I and many others who worked/continue to work, do not tell any of her "real life" friends about what she really does for a job. Needless to say, she has no one from her existing circles to confide to when it comes to the necessary emotional outpourings needed for working girls to stay sane. So she turns to her "industry friends", whose shared commonality is chiefly defined as what we do/did for a living. The outpourings can become very intense and draining, in addition to the way working in the industry can literally be a 24/7 job. These along with existing vulnerabilities like general emotional/practical flakiness probably mean that people like May just prefer to avoid  anything to do with the industry when she doesn't want to or need to work.

So instead of such friendships being defined more by personal loyalty, shared experiences and emotions, people end up defining each other (and our friendships) based on the sex acts that we perform on others and the difficulties that result from these. This is often why these "industry friendships" frequently end in heartbreak or sense of betrayal when one person decides to leave the industry and move right on without uttering a word.

Ultimately I believe friendships, like all things in life, entail choices. You choose how you treat your friends, who to remain friends with, and accept the karma and consequences of your choices. But I think the "industry friend" phenomenon can be lessened if people would do more to allow themselves better time, emotional and physical balance in the course of working by doing things like budgeting so they don't work excessive hours during any given week and end up relying on their industry friends more for survival and shared terrors. And providers frankly just need to be more supportive or each other and understanding of business needs - I have lost count of, for example, how many times I had been stood up by other girls on bi/straight double bookings that were arranged way ahead of time or stood up on accommodation that I thought were all agreed. Such stresses lead to more stresses and a general attitude that everyone in the industry is in it for themselves!

We also could do with society cutting providers more slack and allow them to have more productive relationships with each other that go beyond the often practical and mutual survival-based assistance like constantly swapping information on who are the stalkers etc. Many providers are genuinely lovely people and if they were able to more consistently offer the lovely parts of themselves to each other, I truly think both them and their clients would be happier.