Date posted:
Year 1.
The first year working as a companion was a whirlwind to say the least. It's like your first day of high school, full of anxiety and curiousness, it was something completely new to me and I had to adapt fast, real fast. I was young, impressionable, naive and inexperienced, but chirpy as ever, I knew I had to make a change and leave my mark in the industry. Hence, I rented an apartment for the week, put an ad in the paper, bought a second phone...all on my first day on the job.
The next morning, my phone kept buzzing non-stop with enquiries. Check-in finally came, and voila! My very first booking. I was nervous as hell, the doubts started to creep slowly in my mind, what was going to happen? What do I do? What if I mess up? So many questions & so little time.... but he turned out to be a no show. Bummer.
I was devastated with my confidence slightly trimmed. Fortunately, 15 minutes later a call came in and shortly thereafter my second booking arrived. Of all days the intercom wasn't working so I had to rush down to the gate and greet him, I was donning my halter neck red summery dress and he was dressed in a casual suit, he approached me eagerly accompanied with a sweet smile on his face. As we went into our respective room and got ourselves comfortable, I asked him to take a shower but for some reason those lines came out smooth in my mind but as I blurted it out my nervousness came to show because we stood there for a minute starting at each other like statues with uncomfortable chuckles, but then, he leaned in for the first kiss. I couldn't resist, he picked me up on the bench-top while sliding his hands up my dress, one thing led to another and with a blink of an eye, half-an-hour was up, and he left.
Moving around hotel rooms, I was a nomad looking for a place to finally call my own and I finally found an apartment that fancied my taste. A beautiful, elegant & spacious apartment with a gorgeous view of the river that also came with a not-so-gorgeous pricy penny for $1,100 a week. Earning money was completely 180 degrees to what is it now, making bank with $1,000 a day with very few clients was as easy as making coffee. But at that location, I finally didn't have to bounce around hotel rooms and was able to find my feet and began to build my business. It took a month to obtain a steady set of weekly regulars, and everything seemed to fall into place, until a turn of events happened.
Not long after moving into my new apartment, I soon discovered the person who 'helped set me up in the industry' was secretly stealing money from me. As a novice in the industry, I didn't take notice but the 3rd week of doing the books and calculating my bottom line, the numbers didn't add up. I confronted him about it & he flat out denied anything about it, but anybody with a calculator and able to compute simple calculations is able to find out, it was bare obvious.
Eventually we parted ways, amicably. After all, I was happy to pay him money but not be sneaky about it.
I soon became a deer in the headlights, with no one to turn to, running a business and trying to make rent, not something an amateur in the industry would want to experience. With the addition he did not 'teach' me much and there so much about the industry I have yet to learn and experience. I had no peers to turn to, no forums of any kind unlike the plethora of information that Twitter, and Reddit exists today to reach out to for help! I was truly on my own at this juncture. I made a lot of rookie mistakes, but it didn't take long until I hit the ground running once again - I made a routine, I watched 'The Secret Life of a Call Girl' and the rest is history!
The ball was in my court and 6 months later all was going splendid. I paid off 2 car loans, I paid rent at my own apartment for over a year in advance and I bought a car outright.
This led to an eventual problem, as the money kept rolling the spending followed suit. I was more inclined to shouting my friends' nights out - when I should've been saving up! It can't be work and no play. Mistakes are the best teacher, and I am grateful I have evolved from that, I was very fortunate to not run into any trouble with clients.
End of Year 1.
Business was booming and life couldn't have been more kind to me, I wasn't seeing anyone new, and I didn't need to as my regulars sustained enough revenue for me to get the show running. Life was grand...until a fateful event came crashing down, but that's a story for another day....
