Tessa (not her real name) is an escort. In plain English, she has sex for money.Now Tessa is not stupid, nor pathetic, nor under coercion. She is a smart, self-directed woman who has chosen this life because she likes the hours and the very good pay. “I can spend my day with my son, then go out and make an excellent living,” she tells YNOT.

Tessa didn’t plan to be an escort. Instead, things progressed in her life until she came to this point. “I was going to school and needed a job, so I started as a shooter girl,” she says. “But then I saw how much money the dancers were making and I wanted to earn as much.”

Once she became a dancer, Tessa soon became aware that other girls were boosting their income by selling sex. “I used to swear up and down that I would never become an escort, and I used to look with total disgust at those girls who were,” she recalls. “But two years later, the money I was making as a dancer wasn’t enough, so I decided to take a customer up on his offer of $500 to meet him at a hotel. After that first time, I didn’t think twice about it.”

Today, Tessa splits her time between dancing and escorting. “I do both my jobs at the club. I don’t post ads; that would be too dangerous,” she explains. “About 60 – 70-percent of the people who come to the club are looking for more than a dance. So I arrange to meet them somewhere; usually a hotel. I also go to upscale bars and meet my clients that way.”

As with any job, the quality of clients varies. “Some expect you to be their therapist and to listen to them whine and complain about how rotten their lives are,” she says. “Others fall in love with you after the first time and mistake the sex for something more than it is. But there are also those who are just nice guys, who understand that you a professional providing a service, and treat you as such. I’ve got one regular who I see every week who is like this. He is bright and personable and fun to be with.”

So which job is better; being a stripper, or a call girl? “It’s better being an escort than a dancer,” Tessa replies. “When you’re a dancer, you have to wait until you can convince a customer in the bar to go to the back room with you. That can take up to an hour. But being an escort, you have people calling and asking to meet you, without the small talk that you have to go through in the club.”

Tessa’s twin professions have affected her view of the male species, and not for the better. “People always ask me if I hate men since I got into this industry,” she says. “I think ‘hate’ is too strong a word, but I will admit that my view of men in general has changed. After all, 98-percent of my clients are married.”

“I get to see the ugly side of men. I hear them talking to other guys about their wives and women and in general and I see how they are when they’re drunk. It’s not pretty. They come in to cheat on their wives and the way they behave around their friends; I wonder if they would act the same around their girlfriends.”

“I get to see the ugly side of men. I hear them talking to other guys about their wives and women and in general and I see how they are when they’re drunk. It’s not pretty. They come in to cheat on their wives and the way they behave around their friends; I wonder if they would act the same around their girlfriends.”

On the lighter side, Tessa reassures all those men feeling inadequate about their sexual staying power that they’re not alone. “Guys like to brag that they can last an hour,” she laughs. “I’ve been with lots of men and typically they last 10-15 minutes, tops.”

“The weirdest guy I’ve ever met was a guy who used to come to the club with a padlock locked around his penis,” she recalls. “He’d pride himself on giving the key to whichever mistress he might have at the time. When I was dancing for him, I put my hands in his lap and it was wet. He apologized and said, ‘Because of this padlock, I leak urine sometimes.’ I snatched my hands away, went and washed them, and stayed away from him from that moment on.”

Today, Tessa is committed to being a dancer, escort, and a mother. She knows that someday she’ll have to find other work – “guys always want younger girls; that’s part of the fantasy” – but for now she’s content to do what she does.

“This life isn’t for you if you’re not really comfortable with yourself and your body,” Tessa tells YNOT. “You have to be strong, keep off the drugs, and never lose sight of who you are and what you care about. But hey, the money is really, really good.”