On both my first Second Life account and my current one, I worked quite a few years (October 2006 to June 2008, on my first account, and September 2008 to May 2011, on this one) as an escort and exotic dancer to cover my in-world expenses, or part of them. However, even in those early, heady years, an SL escort’s job wasn’t easy.
It’s always been a job that requires pretty serious role-playing and emoting skills, and substantial, regular investment in your appearance and equipment: clothes, shoes, skins, hair, accessories, sex-related avatar components (genitals, nipples, and the like). An escort needs to look the part, and sound (or read, if s/he prefers to avoid using voice chat) the part, if s/he wants to get hired.
Getting hired isn’t easy. Escorts in SL spend much of their time waiting for a client to show up and hire them, dancing on the poles of the club they’re affiliated with, or standing around on the sidewalk as street prostitutes outside clubs and on the streets of sims or parcels dedicated to SL sex services. Of course, the abundance of in-world escort / strip clubs and SL’s small user base don’t do SL’s sex workers any favours.
Some escorts are fortunate enough to establish a fairly steady income, as they’ve become popular among their club’s patrons, have managed to establish a contact list that includes several regular clients who’ll book them on a more or less regular basis, and have a satisfactory stream of occasional clients (i.e. not regulars). Of course, there are always the tips for their pole dancing and strip-tease. Others are less fortunate.
As far as I’m concerned, over time, more people became aware of me and my work, and so there were days when I found myself logging in and being greeted by a flurry of notecards and IMs; most of them were from people who weren’t my regulars. Many of them led to successful and enjoyable sessions. My regulars were a delight to work with, and for.
Sadly, many other potential clients’ messages were of the “r u available” and “hey baby” (I’m intentionally keeping the spelling intact) variety. Rarely did these messages culminate in a session. Others were explicit to the point where red flags were raised all around me. I must say I’ve often turned potential clients down because it was nearly impossible to communicate with them, or because I didn’t feel comfortable to work with them.
The Importance of Communication
I mentioned before the difficulty SL escorts are having w.r.t. getting hired at all. This, however, is no excuse for anyone to treat them with disrespect for their work, their time, their personalities, their boundaries, and their safety. Unfortunately, sex is still surrounded by shame, guilt, stereotypes, taboos, and all sorts of sexist notions.
These factors poison gender relations and, if we add the stigma our societies attach to sex work, we can begin to understand the extra damage that’s inflicted upon client – escort communication and cooperation. In this post, since the vast majority of clients are men and the vast majority of escorts are women, I’ll focus on the male client – female escort dynamic.
Many potential clients, especially ones who have little or no experience with sex in RL and / or with RL sex workers, have insecurities and / or feelings of guilt about hiring an escort, so they’re really shy about it. Others act in a downright unpleasant, machismo-fuelled, manner and exhibit a complete lack of respect for the escort, her work, personality, boundaries, privacy, and safety. Others expect the escort to guess what they want / need.
Just as a potential client has the option to not hire this escort or the other, so does the escort have the option to turn a potential client down; I’ve already said I’ve declined to work with certain clients during my years as an SL sex worker. In this post, I’ll give you some pointers as to what will make an escort feel confident that it’s worth responding to your IM or notecard rather than ignoring it.
Sex Work Is Work, and Sex Workers Are Professionals
Whatever stereotypes you may have been raised with w.r.t. sex work, cast them aside – a sex worker, in RL or SL, is a worker; a service provider – the fact that she offers sexual services rather than, say, legal advice doesn’t matter at all.
When you’re looking to book an escort, remember that the exact same rules apply as when you’re looking to book a professional in any other business sector – RL or SL.
I know that drawing parallels between sex work and such pedestrian and unsexy jobs may be a bit of a buzzkill, but that’s the way it is. Booking an escort to please you sexually is no different than calling a technician to fix your computer or your fridge, or booking a sim landscaper to help you with the design of your virtual land. You must always have in mind that you’re booking someone who’s spent money to acquire a set of tools, time to learn and hone a set of skills, and is making their skills and talents available to you for a price.
Being Online Doesn’t Necessarily Mean “I’m Available Right Now”
Just because an escort’s in-world ad board indicates she’s online doesn’t mean she’s available to come to you right now. It may come as a bit of a surprise to many, but SL escorts do have a (second) life outside their line of work: much like everyone else, they occasionally do other things in-world. They might take time off work to explore, shop, enjoy some private time with friends and / or romantic partners, even attend in-world classes (scripting, building, pose making, 3D modelling, and so on). So, when you message an escort, don’t assume that she’s “on duty” and that the only thing keeping her from responding to your urges is her being busy with another client.
Does this mean you shouldn’t IM or send a notecard to an escort who is online right now? No. By all means, go ahead and send that IM or notecard. It’s perfectly OK for you to initiate contact with the escort even when she’s offline. Just keep a few things in mind:
- If the escort is offline, it may be best to send a notecard rather than an IM, as her IMs may get capped;
- If she’s online, she may very well be unavailable and unable to respond to you right away or meet you right now; you should accept and respect that, and not pester her to respond to you.
Do Your Homework Beforehand
Most SL escorts are quite open about their in-world profession, and provide information about it (time zone, experience, services offered, fantasies, desires, fetishes, and kinks they’re willing to cater for, their limits, rates). You’ll typically find this information on their SL profile in notecards provided by the ad boards in the club where they work; some have even signed up with websites dedicated to promoting SL escorts and maintain detailed profiles there.
Unfortunately, both I, and other escorts I know personally, have come across potential customers that don’t bother to read a sex worker’s notecard and / or profile. So, when they contact her, she has to spoon-feed them information that was right in front of them, but they didn’t bother to look at it. Not knowing the basics, such as the sex worker’s rates, when and where you want to meet them, and whether the services they offer can cover your personal desires, needs, fetishes, and kinks, is no way to initiate an intimate encounter. And no, you can’t say “oh, I’m a virgin and / or beginner, so I don’t know about anything like that,” because no one’s going to believe you.
Respect Their Boundaries and Limits
As I wrote, the information in an escort’s notecard typically contains information pertaining not only to her rates, time zone, services, the desires, fantasies, fetishes, and kinks she caters for, as well as the things she simply won’t do. Although most SL escorts are pretty flexible and open as to what they’ll accommodate, there are some activities that some of them find unappealing. Also, there’s a certain type of activity (i.e. sexual ageplay) that the overwhelming majority of SL escorts won’t even touch, as it’s considered downright criminal (and rightly so) in RL and, as far as Linden Lab is concerned, it’s prohibited outright by its Content Guidelines.
So, if what you want to include in your session is something that the escort doesn’t feel comfortable with, respect her boundaries and move on to someone else who’ll accommodate you willingly; don’t try to coerce anyone into satisfying a fetish they don’t feel comfortable with, because you can find yourself on the business end of an abuse report, plus you can get into legal trouble, and rightly so. Finally, just because a woman is an escort doesn’t mean she’s obliged to compromise her relationship (RL or SL) to accept you as a sexual partner. Yes, escorts do have relationships, and these are often long-term ones. You should accept and respect that.
Also, you should understand something that really should have become a no-brainer by now, but unfortunately it seems that too many people still haven’t gotten the memo: it is never a good idea to send unsolicited friend requests and / or teleport offers. Never. It’s invasive, it’s intrusive, it’s creepy, and it’s very likely to get you blocked by the escort and banned from the clubs she works at.
Respect Their Privacy
Until voice chat was successfully implemented in SL, in-world sexual roleplay involved avatar manipulation (i.e. selection, sequencing, and adjustment of animations, and control and manipulation of virtual genitalia and erogenous body parts), and text-based emoting. Rapidly-typed and well-written emoting was what really separated the best and most successful escorts from the lesser ones. Back then, sex work in SL was viewed as both a way to make some money and as a way to safely explore such fantasies: it was understood and accepted that there was a wall between RL and SL, protecting client and escort.
Although voice chat has been available in SL for many years now, many escorts choose to not offer voice or cam sessions, in order to protect their privacy and their RL. Many escorts have families in RL, so it should be quite obvious why they wouldn’t want to go on voice and cam. Then, there’s always the risk of revenge porn. In some other cases, the escort’s RL sexual / gender identity is indeed different from her avatar’s, and this could easily cause them to be subjected to transphobic bullying and “exposed” on SL’s infamous gossip cesspools. Finally, others aren’t native English speakers and fear, rightly or not, that their accent might be a disadvantage for them.
So, for many SL escorts, voice and cam sessions are unacceptably invasive. If you really want a voice or cam session, look for someone who does offer such a service and don’t pester those who don’t in any way; don’t question their reasons, don’t question their RL gender; don’t haggle for a lower rate, and absolutely don’t even think of threatening them with “exposure” on the gossip cesspools.
But even in your encounters with escorts that do offer voice and cam sessions, you must respect their privacy. Don’t ask about their RL details, don’t take screenshots or video recordings of their cam session with you, and don’t record your voice chat session. This is not just utterly creepy behaviour; it’s a violation of LL’s ToS and Community Standards worthy of getting you permanently banned from Second Life itself. It’s also a crime that can get you in very serious legal trouble, especially if you’re an EU citizen or the person you’re after is an EU citizen, as the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) is very strict regarding such matters – and rightly so.
Scrooge Never Got Laid
I know haggling has long been associated with sex work, especially with street prostitutes. You might feel tempted to act disappointed try to get a discount from an escort that doesn’t offer voice and / or cam sessions. Don’t do it. Don’t even think of doing it. For starters, it’s completely disrespectful to the sex worker. Would you try to haggle the price at a restaurant? Would you try to haggle with your lawyer? I think not. Second, many clubs have standard rates that all of their staff follow. Even freelance escorts don’t sell their services for less than their colleagues who work at clubs; escorts simply don’t do the “race to the bottom” thing. Third, given the L$ – USD / EUR / CAD / AUD / whatever other RL currency exchange rate, haggling will make you look like a miser and a tosser, and you’ll end up being ignored by all SL escorts – maybe even banned from many clubs; they do inform each other about bad clients, you know.
Now, let’s tackle the subject of tipping… Yes, you may wind up being a regular at a certain club, and becoming a regular client of one escort, or more. It’s understandable that, if you’re at the club where they work and they’re working their shift at that time, you’ll want to tip them more than others. However, it’s rude to systematically neglect the other escorts, dancers, hosts, and DJs. You don’t have to tip them all. Also, the tips you give to those staff members you do tip don’t need to be in the L$1,000 area, but they shouldn’t be insultingly low, either; as a rule of thumb, tips below L$50 are insultingly low.
Why “hey baby” and “r u available” Don’t Work
Two messages escorts receive very often from potential clients are “hey baby” and “r u available”; these are very poor conversation openers. I’ll examine “hey baby”, as it’s the worst of the two. There are people who think it’s a good, “friendly-flirty” way to start a conversation, and they often use it when trying to initiate a flirty chat with a woman they’ve never talked to before.
The truth, however, is that it’s not. It’s a tired, overused cliché that every woman online expects total strangers to send her at least twice a day in her IM window, often followed by a gratuitous dick pic. I’ve been online for more than twenty years now, and I can guarantee that no one out there appreciates receiving this message from a person they’ve never talked to before. Also, it gives the impression that you think there’s a level of intimacy that simply isn’t there and that you believe you can ignore that the woman may be in a relationship. Therefore, it can be perceived as creepy and disrespectful. So, unless the person you’re addressing it to is your baby, just don’t use it. It was never welcome in the first place, and it hasn’t aged well.
I’ve established it’s not a good way to start flirting with someone. Now let’s see if it’s any good for approaching an escort. Again, it’s not. It’s got baggage from its use in flirting, and it takes this baggage here too. In fact, it’s even worse in the context of a communication with an escort, because it implies that you believe you can ignore the escort’s possible relationship status, simply because she provides sexual services. Of course, this brings us back to the issue of respecting the escort’s boundaries.
Other than that, making “hey baby” your message to an escort shows that you don’t recognise the escort’s work as work, and her as a professional; that you’re not taking her and her work seriously. Of course, I know very well that sex, including cybersex, is typically confined to rather intimate settings and that it serves as a way for people to unwind. It’s perfectly understandable that the overall atmosphere is more casual and light-hearted than a consultation with your accountant. But still, the interaction between an escort and you is, at its heart, a business transaction. So, it should be treated like any other transaction with any service provider – if you were reaching out to a scripter, a builder, a sim landscaper, or an SL photographer, how would you talk to them?
It’s also completely devoid of any information that’ll help the escort determine whether she can work with you. Make no mistake: providing this information is your responsibility, not the escort’s. Don’t force the escort to guess. When the escort receives a “hey baby” message, the only information she gets is that it that you sent it; so, she’ll go have a look at your SL profile to see if she can glean any information as to what sort of person you are, and what you may want in a session.
Another reason why “hey baby” doesn’t work in your favour is that it shows you don’t understand something crucial about the nature of your interaction with an escort: although your session with her, once it’s under way, often resembles an actual date or sexual encounter with a sex partner or lover of yours, setting it up can’t resemble any conversation you’d have with someone on an online dating platform like Tinder, Grindr, or what have you.
You see, online dating and booking a sex worker are two entirely different things: when dating online, you’re trying to start a conversation and see if you and the other person can establish some sort of rapport before determining whether something emotional or sexual can develop between you and the other person. On the other hand, when you’re booking an escort you need to offer and collect very specific information.
On the other hand, “r u available” may not be as annoying and intrusive as “hey baby”, but it’s still not helpful. The reason is that it doesn’t give the escort any information to help her decide if she can work with you or not. It burdens the escort with undue guesswork, and that simply isn’t the way to kick things off.
Offer Sex Workers The Information They Need Upfront
I know I’m repeating myself, but I don’t care, because this basic principle can’t be stressed enough: no session between you and an escort can start, much less be successful and to your satisfaction, if the escort you’re trying to book can’t decide whether she can work safely and comfortably with you. To do so, she needs some basic information about you, something that messages of the “hey baby” and “r u available” variety don’t offer. In RL, they offer the escort precisely zero information about who’s sending them, when they want to meet the sex worker, how long they want the session to last, or what they want the session to involve.
Now, things in SL are a little different. When we receive an IM or a notecard, we obviously know which avatar sent it, and we can have a look at their profile. More often than not, however, we run into completely empty profiles. Of course, it’s your prerogative to keep your profile empty, and you have every right to write as much, or as little, about you on it as you want. However, the combination of a blank profile and a “hey baby” IM won’t make it more likely for us to respond to you.
If you want to communicate successfully with a sex worker, you need to let her know what sort of service(s) you’re looking for, how much of her time you need, and where and when you’d like to meet them: your SL home, some free sex area, one of the rooms offered by the club the sex worker works for, etc. In other words, scheduling your service by an SL sex worker shouldn’t be any different or less specific than scheduling any other work – however mundane and pedestrian this may sound.
Hold Your Horses With The Explicit Messages
Although SL provides a very welcome and liberating degree of anonymity and separation of one’s RL and SL, there are always ways in which any user’s RL privacy and safety can be compromised, from malware like the infamous RedZone and other “alt detection systems” to revenge porn and “exposure” on SL’s infamous gossip landfills. If this applies to ordinary romantic / sexual liaisons, things can become much worse in the field of SL sex work: as is the case with RL sex work, SL sex work can feel, or even become, unsafe for the escort.
Sex work may be ubiquitous in SL, but in RL it’s criminalised in many jurisdictions. Although SL by default allows you to keep your SL activity somewhat disconnected from your RL identity, escorts who reside in states and countries where being a sex worker and / or hiring one is illegal can be placed at risk, especially if national or state authorities decide to target SL-facilitated sex work. It goes without saying that, among escorts that live in such places, those offering voice and cam sessions face a greater risk.
So, it makes perfect sense for them to not want to have explicit conversations about sex or money, especially with these two combined. When I was still a sex worker, some SL escorts who live(d) in the US and were also escorts in RL had told me that mention of sex in a potential client’s first message was a deal-breaker for them, as it was too dangerous. I still remember one former colleague from the US who’d received a notecard from a guy, in which he wrote at length, in great detail, and in very graphic terms, how much he loved certain sexual practices. She chose to not respond to him at all. Initiating your communication with an escort with explicit messages shows that you’re not taking her safety seriously. Yes, your goal is to have sex with the escort you’re talking to. But, as I wrote earlier in this post, you must treat her as a professional, and you must not pose a safety risk for her, however unlikely you may think she might end up on the business end of an anti-prostitution crackdown.
While we’re at it, I want to point out that you really, really don’t need to go off bragging about your sculpted / mesh / animesh dick. Besides what I wrote about why explicit messages aren’t a great idea to initiate contact with an escort, either in RL or SL, there are other reasons that I’ll explain below:
For one, bragging too much about your dick, and endowing your avatar with an unrealistically huge schlong says things about you that you really wouldn’t like – besides the visual difficulties it poses when the time comes for you and the escort to have sex.
Second, escorts are sex workers; I was one myself. It’s their job, and it was mine, to have sex, so we’ve seen, sucked, and fucked numerous dicks in SL. We know all of them, and we know everything about them. Escorts aren’t extremely easy to impress, and – more importantly – they don’t care. An escort’s job is to give you a good time, not judge you for your age, body size, dick size, masculinity, whether your avatar’s attachments are state of the art or not, your RL social standing, or even your fashion sense. These things are entirely superficial, and you shouldn’t need to worry about them in your communication and sessions with an escort. But you also need to help her feel safe, comfortable and confident about working with you.
Style Credits:
First Photo:
- Mesh Body: Maitreya Mesh Body – Maitreya Lara v5.3 by Onyx LeShelle
- Mesh Head: LAQ Bento – Motion Capture – Gaia 3.07 by Mallory Cowen
- Skin:
- Body: LAQ ~ Lina BOM skin (No brows) – tone 3.0
- Head: LAQ ~ Gaia Skin [3.0]
- Makeup: Included with the head’s HUD
- Manicure & Pedicure: alaskametro<3 “Pride” nail art appliers by Alaska Metropolitan
- Tattoos:
- Izzie’s – Izzie’s – Cellulite 1 by Izzie Button
- QoS tattoo on right ankle (made by me)
- Eyes: IKON Perspective Eyes – Coffee (S) by Ikon Innovia
- Hair: *ARGRACE* RIE – B&W
- Piercings:
- PUNCH / Diamond Nose Ring (two of them worn on the left side of my nose) by Celandria Resident
- (Yummy) Cleopatra Nose Ring – Diamond Flower Nose Ring – Silver by Polyester Partridge
- EarthStones Belly Gems – Treasure – Maitreya Treasure Pack by Abraxxa Anatine
- Bangles: Izzie’s – 80’s Rainbow Bangles mesh (l)
- Anklets:
- EarthStones Petit Vigne Anklet – Fatpack (R)
- VOBE – B.Toes Anklets Slut Right (Silver) by Leó Streeter (leoo streeter)
- ~~Ysoral~~ .:Luxe Anklets Ariel :.(Maitreya)(Left) by fenixdragon Rau
- Shoes: {Livalle} Luscious -Platform Heels- Magenta (MAITREYA – Customised) by Lindsey Warwick
- Top: :::insanya::: LailaTop – M.LARA by Tatyana Ultsch
- Skirt: :::insanya::: BiaSkirt – M.LARA (longer)
- Bikini Bottom: [BB] Mini Bikini – FISHNET – Maitreya – BOTTOM by Belzebubble
- Pose: BellePoses – Natalie by Belle Vanilla
Second Photo:
- Mesh Body: Maitreya Mesh Body – Maitreya Lara v5.3 by Onyx LeShelle
- Mesh Head: LAQ Bento – Motion Capture – Gaia 3.07 by Mallory Cowen
- Skin:
- Body: LAQ ~ Lina BOM skin (No brows) – tone 3.0
- Head: LAQ ~ Gaia Skin [3.0]
- Makeup: Included with the head’s HUD
- Manicure & Pedicure: alaskametro<3 “Pride” nail art appliers by Alaska Metropolitan
- Tattoos:
- Izzie’s – Izzie’s – Cellulite 1 by Izzie Button
- Eyes: IKON Perspective Eyes – Coffee (S) by Ikon Innovia
- Hair: MINA – Kayla – Black and greys by Mina Nakamura
- Piercings:
- PUNCH / Diamond Nose Ring (two of them worn on the left side of my nose) by Celandria Resident
- (Yummy) Cleopatra Nose Ring – Diamond Flower Nose Ring – Silver by Polyester Partridge
- EarthStones Belly Gems – Treasure – Maitreya Treasure Pack by Abraxxa Anatine
- Bangles: Izzie’s – 80’s Rainbow Bangles mesh (l)
- Anklets:
- Shoes: {Livalle} Luscious -Platform Heels- Magenta (MAITREYA – Customised) by Lindsey Warwick
- Top: [BB] Mini Bikini – FISHNET – Maitreya – TOP by Belzebubble
- Skirt: :::insanya::: BiaSkirt – M.LARA (longer)
- Bikini Bottom: [BB] Mini Bikini – FISHNET – Maitreya – BOTTOM by Belzebubble
- Pose: Sorry, but it’s been a while, and I don’t remember which ones I used
Third Photo:
- Mesh Body: Maitreya Mesh Body – Maitreya Lara v5.3 by Onyx LeShelle
- Mesh Head: LAQ Bento – Motion Capture – Gaia 3.07 by Mallory Cowen
- Skin:
- Body: LAQ ~ Lina BOM skin (No brows) – tone 3.0
- Head: LAQ ~ Gaia Skin [3.0]
- Makeup: Included with the head’s HUD
- Manicure & Pedicure: alaskametro<3 “Pride” nail art appliers by Alaska Metropolitan
- Tattoos:
- Izzie’s – Izzie’s – Cellulite 1 by Izzie Button
- QoS tattoo on right ankle (made by me)
- Eyes: IKON Perspective Eyes – Coffee (S) by Ikon Innovia
- Hair: *ARGRACE* RIE – B&W
- Collar: Mon Cheri – Luci Leash Collar ML by Freya Olivieri
- Piercings:
- PUNCH / Diamond Nose Ring (two of them worn on the left side of my nose) by Celandria Resident
- (Yummy) Cleopatra Nose Ring – Diamond Flower Nose Ring – Silver by Polyester Partridge
- EarthStones Belly Gems – Treasure – Maitreya Treasure Pack by Abraxxa Anatine
- Bangles: Izzie’s – 80’s Rainbow Bangles mesh (l)
- Anklets:
- EarthStones Petit Vigne Anklet – Fatpack (R)
- VOBE – B.Toes Anklets Slut Right (Silver) by Leó Streeter (leoo streeter)
- ~~Ysoral~~ .:Luxe Anklets Ariel :.(Maitreya)(Left) by fenixdragon Rau
- Shoes: {Livalle} Luscious -Platform Heels- Magenta (MAITREYA – Customised) by Lindsey Warwick
- Top: [BB] Mini Bikini – FISHNET – Maitreya – TOP by Belzebubble
- Skirt: :::insanya::: BiaSkirt – M.LARA (longer) by Tatyana Ultsch
- Bikini Bottom: [BB] Mini Bikini – FISHNET – Maitreya – BOTTOM by Belzebubble
- Pose: Kokoro Poses – Rafaela by Kokoro Kiyori
Flickr album: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmWsNus7
Mona Eberhardt 
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