Undercover Priestess: Secret Diary of a Whore

Part 7: The Call of The Weary Warrior

There is a cliche saying about men seeking prostitutes because they are uncomfortable with seeking traditional therapy.

It’s a cliche that exists because it’s true.

Pleasure, orgasm, touch and contact are not the only impulses that drive someone into the temple where eros is served to the stranger.

Sometimes there is different medicine that is being pursued, even if unconsciously. The need for contact. For care. To be witnessed. To be heard. To feel and experience tenderness. To work something out in the container of relationship.

For some men, pursuing this in traditional therapy is a threat to their masculine identity. Pursuing help or seeking a place to explore vulnerability is just not what men do. Not real men. Not strong men. Not masculine men.

And yet- the ache to be held remains.

For men like this, prostitutes are a safe space to explore this need. There are a few reasons for this.

One is that they can justify the experience to themselves as driven by the primary urge of their masculine libido- a safer construct to embody. A safer desire and need to admit to themselves.

Second- their instinct to process emotional and psychological content through eros is reflective of the way that eros is often the closest territory to vulnerability they know within themselves.

Third, the prostitute inhabits a liminal realm outside of ordinary reality. She exists on the edges of society, in the underground and secret. In this way it is similar to a shamanic or ceremonial space where one’s usual ego constructs can be laid aside temporarily while taboo or non-ordinary aspects of the self that do not fit into the core identity can be inhabited and explored.

With the liminal priestess of the underground, he is safe from being perceived by eyes who might witness him committing this anti-masculine act of vulnerability and need because it is free from his “known” self. Where therapy suggests including and integrating his vulnerable, fragile self with his known identity construct, the underground space of prostitution offers a refuge where he can explore vulnerabiliy without reconciling it against his masculine identity.

There are some men who pursue prostitution as therapy consciously, seeking a loving witness to their experience, knowing that the medicine of holding and tenderness is the real impulse behind their reach for the prostitute.

Others are driven by this core desire yet hide it even from themselves.

And for some, it is just barely beneath the surface. All that is required is a well placed question. A kind curiosity towards their inner world. An openness to listen. And then suddenly the floodgates open.

For such men, pursuing therapy directly is dangerous because it is contrary to the deepest belief they have about themselves. That they are strong. That they do not need help. They do not need support. They do not need tenderness or care. That they should be able to handle everything on their own. And that they certainly do not need to be held. To admit such a need would threaten not only their core sense of self, but their sense of safety in this world as a being of masculine control.

So instead they pursue it perversely, in the form that feels safe and familiar to who they know themselves to be: through sexual closeness.

I saw many men like this over the years, and I came to recognize them by the energy they carried. By the way they answered my questions. By the tiredness and longing I could see behind their eyes.

So tired. So… heartbroken.

One of these men who came to me was a lieutenant for the Marines.