What Clients Actually Want When Hiring an Escort

By OrientalNY

Lauren keeps a mental catalogue of her regular clients, and if you heard her describe them, you might be surprised. There's Michael, the fifty-something lawyer who books her every other Thursday and spends most of their time together talking about his mother's dementia. There's David, who takes her to dinner at expensive restaurants and mostly wants someone to discuss books with. There's Robert, recently divorced, who sometimes just holds her hand while they watch old movies in his apartment. "People think they know what men want from us," Lauren said when we met for lunch in Midtown. "They're almost always wrong."

I'll admit, I had my own assumptions before I started talking to escorts about their clients. I imagined something transactional and purely physical, encounters stripped of everything except desire. But the more conversations I had, the more I realized how much I'd misunderstood. Yes, physical intimacy is part of what's being purchased. But it's rarely the main thing, and sometimes it's not part of the equation at all. What clients are really buying, Lauren explained, is something our society doesn't like to admit that people need to buy at all: connection, attention, and the feeling of being desired without the complications of a real relationship.

Loneliness is the common thread running through almost every client story I've heard. These are men who have money but lack intimacy in their lives. Some are married but emotionally disconnected from their spouses. Some are divorced and don't know how to date in middle age. Some are successful workaholics who've sacrificed relationships for careers and woke up one day realizing they're alone. They come to escorts not just for sex, but for the experience of being with someone who seems genuinely interested in them, even if they know that interest is being paid for by the hour.

What fascinates me is how much emotional labor goes into creating that illusion. Lauren told me about preparing for appointments like an actress preparing for a role. If she's seeing Michael, she reads up on dementia care so she can ask intelligent questions about his mother's condition. For David, she actually reads the books he mentions so they can have real conversations. She remembers details from previous appointments, asks follow-up questions, makes each client feel like he's the only person she's thinking about. "They're not paying for my body," she explained. "They're paying for the fantasy that I care. And the weird thing is, after seeing someone regularly for months or years, sometimes the caring becomes real."

The clients who want purely physical encounters are actually the minority, according to every oriental escort I've interviewed. More common are the ones seeking what Lauren calls "the girlfriend experience." They want to feel like they're on a date with someone who finds them attractive and interesting. They want conversation and laughter and the warmth of physical affection, not just sex. Some want to feel young again, like they're still the kind of man who can attract a beautiful woman. Others want to feel powerful, successful, desirable. The escort's job is to reflect back the version of themselves they want to see.

But there's a darker undercurrent to some of these desires that Lauren was honest about. Some clients want someone they can control, someone who has to laugh at their jokes and listen to their stories because that's what they're paying for. Some enjoy the power dynamic itself, the fact that this beautiful woman is there because of their money. And some, Lauren admitted quietly, are trying to fill voids so deep that no amount of paid companionship can touch them. "Those are the saddest ones," she said. "The men who see you week after week, year after year, and you can tell they're just getting lonelier. You're a band-aid on a wound that needs surgery."

What stays with me from my conversation with Lauren is something she said near the end of our lunch. We were talking about whether clients understand that the connection they're paying for isn't real, and she was quiet for a long moment. "I think they know and they don't know," she finally said. "It's like watching a movie. You know the actors aren't really in love, but you let yourself feel it anyway. My clients know I'm there because they're paying me, but in those hours together, we both pretend that's not why. They get to feel wanted. I get to pay my bills. And we both pretend it's something more than a transaction."

She looked at me with tired eyes. "The thing is, after you do this long enough, you start to wonder if any connection is ever really real. If everyone isn't just getting something they need from everyone else. Maybe what I'm selling isn't actually that different from what happens in regular relationships. Maybe I'm just more honest about the exchange."