Meanwhile, I'd taken my courage in both hands, turned my first trick, at home, a chubby little guy, about sixty, who chain-smoked untipped cigarettes and talked a lot during sex. He seemed lonely, and I found him surprisingly sweet. I don't know whether I come across as gauche and gentle or seriously intimidating, or whether I was just lucky, but as time went by, it became clear: with me, clients tended to be warm, attentive, gentle. If memory serves, and I think it does, it was not their aggressiveness or their contempt I found difficult to deal with, nor any of the things they were into, but their loneliness, their sadness, their pallid skin, their wretched shyness, the flaws they couldn't conceal, the weaknesses they showed. Their age, their need to feel young flesh against their wizened bodies. Their paunches, their micro-dicks, their flabby arses, their yellow teeth. It was their vulnerability that complicated the whole thing. In the end, the johns you could hate or despise were the ones you could do while remaining completely indifferent. Maximum cash, minimum time, and afterwards never think about them again. But in my limited experience, most clients were fraught with humanity, with frailty, with despair. And it lingered afterwards, clinging to me like remorse.
— from King Kong Theory, by Virginie Despentes.
I have come to know this truth: there's a profound intimacy in sex founded in loneliness and pity. Too fat, too thin, or just plain ugly. It's a deeply vulnerable exposure. We all just want release from our bodies. Sex is a kindness, we can choose to be kind to one another.
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