Wait, But Why? Escort Screening & Verification 101 for Newbies

I’ve written at length about the “how” of escort screening. Right now I’m going to write a little about the “why.”

(Preface: Sometimes I get carried away. If you’re in a rush, you don’t want to hear about my love of 3-legged dogs and my hatred of mayonnaise, and you just want to be reassured that we’re not performing weird witchcraft rituals with your info or selling it to spammers for .0000000001 cent, scroll on down. I assure you, I DO have a point…)

For the Newbies…

This one’s for all the newbies out there ;)

So, last week I received an email from someone named “Mike Smith.” No, that was not the exact name he used, but it was equally generic. Perhaps more so. Think of the most John Q. Public name in the history of Anglo-American names. That’s the name on his just-created-five-minutes-ago gmail account.

Here it is:

Visiting from —- late October. Will stay in a hotel in CBD. Can you see me there?

(I removed the name of the country. Here’s a hint: it’s a huge country. Think of a huge country. A huge country where there are very few names that sound like “Mike Smith.”)

…And that’s it. That’s all he was willing to divulge in this email. A fake name, and the fact that he normally resides in a country that is home to over a billion people–over 15% of the world’s population. Oh, and that he wants me to meet with him at an undisclosed location somewhere downtown, on a day (presumably) within the last two weeks of October.

I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. My answer:

Hey there–thanks for contacting me!!
Of course I can meet in the CBD, provided I’m available on the night you’d like to meet up. Also, have you checked out my screening methods?

Annie

His reply:

I checked out your screening methods. However, I can not provide any of the info as I want to be discreet.
Regards

…
…..
…….

OMGWTFSTFUWWJDSOS911EMSDOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hoookay. Let me break this down for y’all.

Discretion is Important for Us, Too.

Gentlemen. Friends. Future clients. Please, please, please do not confuse the term “discreet” with “entitled and stupid.”

Think about what this man was asking me to do. Ridiculous, right?

Just in case you don’t get where I’m going with this: This man was asking me to meet with him alone, in private, when he was completely unwilling to provide ANY information about himself whatsoever.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Any woman who agrees to that isn’t very concerned with her safety. And if she doesn’t care about her own safety, I promise you she doesn’t care about yours. And I can guarantee you she couldn’t care less about being discreet.

I know literally NOTHING about this man. Actually, I don’t even know if he’s a man at all!! He could be a really smart dog, for all I know. I saw a dog on YouTube who could set up hot dates with lady dogs on a tablet. And that dog only has three legs! Imagine what “Mike Smith” could do with FOUR legs and a tablet!!!

(omg y’all, did you see what I did with that link?!?! Hover over it. I made it say “Three-Legged Genius Dog Uses Tablet for Booty Call.” I am cracking up right now lolllll…wow, I should make myself a martini and watch more videos of dogs using technology to get laid. But I’m not gonna! You know why?? Because I am committed to finishing this highly informative blog post for y’all. THAT’S how much I love you, fellow escorts, future clients, and future clients of my fellow escorts. And that’s a lot, because I really like martinis–exxxtra dirty–and there is pretty much NOTHING in this world I find more inspiring, admirable, and endearing than a 3-legged dog.)

Aaaannnyyyywwwaaayyyyy….

This week I was lucky enough to receive an email from a sweet but mystified newbie. Just to clarify: most of the newbies that contact me are NOT entitled morons. Most are genuinely respectful guys who are simply (and naturally) a bit intimidated by their new discovery: the wonderful world of modern courtesans, professional companions, elite escorts, service providers, and plain ol’ no-bullshit hookers and whores (Warning: we can call ourselves and each other that, but don’t call one of us that unless you know she wants you to. I promise, if she’s into that, she will let you know ;) ).

So this bewildered newbie writes me the kind of email that doesn’t make me want to throw in the towel and do something terrible like…I don’t know…go work at Arby’s or something (if anyone reading this works at Arby’s, I just want you to know that I totally respect your work and dammit, you DO deserve a living wage. I just really hate the smell of mayonnaise, and I bet you have to deal with that all the time.). Like a babe in the woods. this poor guy was out of his element, and everything in him–his brain, his intuition, years and years of media-programmed bias against sex workers–is screaming OHMYGOD STOP NOW AND GET THE F OUTTA HERE!!!!

Yes, I know it seems weird. Yes, I know you want to be “discreet.” So do we.

What’s that? But you have a wife and kids and a job??

Here, check it out: I’m about to blow your mind (and if you pass screening, I might just blow something else ifyaknowwhatimean nudge nudge wink wink).

Are you ready for this? I hope you’re sitting down…

We have wives/husbands, kids, and jobs too.

…And professors, students, colleagues, patients, grandmothers, moms and dads, loves-of-our-lives, nieces and nephews, ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends, ex-husbands and ex-wives, future boyfriends and girlfriends, future husbands and wives, grandkids, landlords, coworkers, godchildren, cousins, neighbors, dogs, sisters and brothers, and and and…well, you get it.

We don’t cease to exist when we leave your hotel room (or vice versa). This is but one part of our lives.

We are people. We are people who are doing work that is so stigmatized in society that our abusive ex husbands are deemed “more suitable” parents than we are, simply because we have sex for reasons other people deem immoral and refuse to be shamed for it. Our work is so stigmatized that people literally make jokes when we are murdered.

I don’t mean to be a downer, but yeah. Please try to put yourselves in our shoes for just a minute. I know it’s important to you that we’re careful with your information. It’s important to us, too. We guard it like gold, not only because we will lose ALL business (and therefore income) if we’re known to kiss and tell, but because we can’t risk outing ourselves. The consequences of indiscretion are dire.

So yes, we want to be discreet. Rest assured that’s our top priority. But it’s not our only top priority.

Screening Keeps Us Safe.

We also want to be safe.

The “screening processes” we use can seem really weird and invasive to a newbie, especially since Hollywood and the media like to portray escorts as women who have sex indiscriminately with complete strangers for a few bucks, and do whatever the “customer” wants, whenever and however he wants to, without knowing a thing about him (or caring!).  Here’s the understatement of the century:  that’s not really accurate.

OK, I’m sure there are a few people who do that–very desperate people who have fallen on hard times financially and really, really, REALLY need money.  The rest of us–that would be the majority of us–choose who we want to meet with, just like “normal people” do.

The service we provide can effectively be described as a blind date, except without the risk of it being a terrible waste of time.  We’ll both enjoy ourselves, because we won’t spend the whole time worrying about if we like each other or if the end of the date will be satisfying.  We both know it will be satisfying.  That’s the beauty of it ;)

But even when you’re going on a blind date, you at least know a little about the person you’re meeting up with.  The person fixing you up might be your best friend, your brother, your co-worker, your mom (it happens, trust me…), or someone from church.  But whoever it is, it’s usually someone for whom you have a reasonable amount of trust.  At the very least, you can be almost 100% sure they’re not sending you on a date with a serial killer right? (If you didn’t answer in the affirmative, then you should probably re-evaluate your relationship with your friends, family, coworkers, and fellow parishoners, my friend.)  

So, even though you don’t technically know this person you’re about to meet on a blind date, someone you trust has vouched for them. They’ve said, “Look, this person is cool, and I really think the two of you will have a great time together.” Even better, they’ll usually provide at least a little info about the person–probably the person’s name, where they work, what they’re into, why you might like them, maybe where they went to school, etc.  Plug some of that stuff into Google, and you can figure out a lot about a person!

Because really, would you want to go on a blind date with a girl you knew absolutely nothing about?  Probably not.  And even though your friend from church probably didn’t recommend me (or maybe they did–who am I to judge?), by the time you decide to contact me, you know quite a bit about me.  You can get a pretty good feel for who I am by checking out my website, and of course you can tell from my many photos whether I’m your physical “type” or not.

On the other hand, when a potential date contacts me, I’m on my own.  There’s no matchmaker there to reassure me that I’ll have fun, or that, at the very least, I’ll be safe.

So How Do I Decide?

Like anyone else, we escorts each have certain preferences and requirements and qualities to consider when choosing a date–even if we know we’ll only be spending an hour with that person.  We’re all individuals, so those preferences, requirements, and qualities vary from escort to escort.  However, there are a few make-or-break factors that most of us have in common.

For most of us, the client must:

• be someone we’re willing to spend time alone with,
• agree to provide the requested honorarium in the amount we’ve specified beforehand (on our websites, listings, etc.)
• be someone we feel is not a danger to our personal safety.  We each have our own standards regarding what makes us feel safe.

Screening is what helps us figure these things out ahead of time.  If a gentleman provides references, we can contact escorts he’s been with in the past to make sure he’s respectful and safe.  If he enrolls in a screening service (P411 is especially popular in my area), that process is even easier.  If he hasn’t done either of those things (usually because he’s new to this), then we can do a little research on who he is.  Personally, this is my favorite method, and the one I use the most.

When I have someone’s name, I can do research ahead of time to see what kind of person he is.  However, I have to be sure the name I’m researching belongs to the person I’m planning to meet up with.  The only way I can be sure of that is if I’m able to contact that person through a public listing of his email address or phone number.

Most professionals will have their name and contact info (usually an office phone or a company email like clientsname@whatevercompany.com) listed on their employer’s website. If I’m able to reach him that way (or if he contacts me that way), then I know he is who he says he is.  Occasionally, university students are able to use this method as well (name and email@whateveruniversity.edu).

Giving me your real name and PROVING that it’s your real name is a show of respect and an acknowledgement of my right to choose–to choose who I meet, to choose who I’m intimate with, and to choose who I trust with my safety. That’s all I ask.

Surely there are women in your life who you feel deserve to be safe.

There are many, many people in my life who feel that way about me.

We’re real people. We deserve to be safe, too.

Because These Girls Deserve to Be Honored and Remembered With Respect

pssssttt–While I have your attention, please consider donating to the funeral expenses of Angelia Mangum and Tjhisha Ball, two young girls who were murdered and left on the side of the road in Florida. One (possibly both) of the girls was working as an exotic dancer (stripper). The local media has been shockingly silent about the murders, and any media attention this tragedy has received has been tainted by the implication that these girls are partially to blame for their own deaths because they had the nerve to take their clothes off for money.