How much?

Over the last three months or so I've had an array of people...okay...men...soliciting personal services online. Most of my followers on various social platforms are female sex workers. The most riveting and challenging conversations, over the course of a couple of months, have been, in ensemble, with a male, sex worker. Two of my close female acquaintances are cam girls, and the rest...I don't know...they don't talk much (is the mainstream crowd perpetually doomed to fearing its own shadow?).

The famous Erotix Salon of Brussels is due shortly and once again I shall plunge into the deep end of that sexy world...albeit from a relatively safe distance. 

In the meantime I reflect a bit on the contradictory set of feelings and experiences that envelope my past and present. On the one hand I'd be the last person in my entourage to judge and on the other hand, I'd be in a great position to do so.

To illustrate the unsolicited attention that online exposure brings here are some examples:

Being offered a significant sum of money for personal services as a submissive (Scam or real? I didn't want to find out). 

Being offered a dinner and a role in a movie in exchange for a relationship.

Being offered money in exchange for sex.

These are just a select few from an array of transactional offers from perfect strangers online. There are others that didn't involve money, and they were not entirely strangers. They mostly wanted free porn, free sex or free love (let's stick to the modern view that love and sex are detached from each other...at least on the surface anyway.). They were also all willing to lie and cheat to get it from me.

Sure, my content is often sensual. Am I asking for it? I doubt it. It's as far from explicit as it can get without covering myself down to my ankles. I still say no thanks to that! And besides it wasn't all about carnal pleasures...some were just looking for emotion, and attention...any level of it. When I take an interest, it's never fake. Perhaps it's that?

Hard to tell the motivation of a man to utterly skip past the fact that I'm married (and don't hide it) and that I'm not a baby girl interested in a sugar daddy. If I were back in my twenties I could at least see the logic. I liked the movie Lolita and I did dabble in such theatrics...back in the day. Do they still get that vibe from me breaking through my older self?

I don't.

I was invited once to a private party on a yacht. Twice actually! At two different periods of my life.

Only one of those invitations came from someone who actually knew me and only one included my partner in the mix. I refused both, for two different reasons. I'm still wondering, however, how common or normal it is for another man to completely ignore the existence of the dominant male in a woman's life. Or is there no longer a consensus on that? Is there no longer only one man holding the torch while any other can just light a match...if they're lucky enough for it to spark? 

If only such attention were actually flattering! I know from experience that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what I look like or how I present it. It doesn't matter if there's real compatibility across the romantic and sexual spectrum either. All that matters is the potential to satisfy the other person's needs (or rather urges since a need is something one cannot actually do without). The influence of excessive porn? I wonder...

Through my feminist self protrudes my conservative wisdom: Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea for sex and love to have become such easy and separate commodities, all in the name of freedom! Perhaps we should remove the word society from the debate and see if our arguments still hold up when there's no scapegoat quite as large and undefined to blame for all our disappointments and unfulfilled desires.

And then there is the ever-present element of attraction. I cannot speak for all women across the whole spectrum of society, but I can speak for myself and perhaps a select few that have been willing to share candidly. 

A woman knows from the very first encounter if she'd be willing to have sex with a man (or another woman) or not. And it is all about physical attraction in the first instance. However, the distance between willingness to do something and actually doing it, is the mental space where most men lose the plot. 

Back to online as well as offline (yes, I've had both) solicitation: Interpreting the cues is crucial! As a woman: built and conditioned to be malleable and intuitive, I might not tell you outright that I'm not that attracted to you. I might smile, give you a hug, talk to you, share a song or a photo, ask you how it's going...It's not an open invitation. It's just interest because I probably do like you otherwise I wouldn't bother engaging at all.

Yes, there is potential but do I want to act on it further? It depends.

And half of what it depends on, is how you act.

Finally, my answer to all those unsolicited offers was pretty simple. Although I admit that the sum of money offered at times, made me question my principles. Everyone has a price!

"The answer is NO."

"My love, my attention, my body...are not for sale!"