Sara Jean Underwood: Celebrity Hook-Ups

“Well, I like steak, but I don’t eat meat off the bone. You’re gonna have to cut that up for me,” I told him. He was shocked, but he was also hooked.

He kept trying to impress me, talking about his work and whatnot. At one point he pulled out a copy of [a very significant magazine] he was on the cover of. “That’s stupid,” I said. “Who even reads magazines? You should let me spank you with it. That’s all it’s really good for.” So he pulled down his pants…

Charlie Sheen (actor) and Tiger Woods (athlete). Eliot Spitzer (politician) and Ted Haggard (pastor).
For better or for worse, these men have at least two things in common: They’re all culturally influential, and they’ve all spent time with sex workers.

Escorts, cam models, porn stars and exotic dancers are all types of sex workers, and sex work is just another type of service labor – you pay someone some sum of money for a set amount of time or service. Pretty standard. People freak out about sex work because, unlike getting your hair cut or talking to your therapist, sex work involves sex or something close to it. And we still love to act outraged and self-righteous about sex in our society.
Blurry look at Olivia Wildes ass in Meadowland

Many people seek out sex workers’ services, including powerful cultural leaders and celebrities. Unfortunately, we don’t generally hear about these exchanges unless some sort of scandal or tragedy goes along with them. This got us to wondering: What are sex-work exchanges with noteworthy people like in the absence of catastrophe?

I spoke to Malorie, which is not her real name (nor is it her professional pseudonym). She has been a sex worker in various capacities for over ten years, and I asked her what it’s like to interact with powerful, famous people. Here are some of the stories she told me, which I can verify are true by the evidence that she shared with me, which was a requisite for this article to be published. I didn’t ask her about money intentionally, opting instead to focus on the interpersonal exchanges.

THE REPUBLICAN

I met him at a golf tournament in Nevada, and he was a total cock – arrogant and full of himself – so of course I was a total bitch to him. He asked me to dinner almost immediately.

It’s funny. The meaner I was to him, the more he liked me. He didn’t like the idea of his authority being questioned, but he liked that I stood up to him. I hear that a lot, especially from people who work as pro-doms. Most of their clients are CEOs, powerful business people and executives – people who are surrounded by “yes men” and beautiful women, but what they really want is for someone to call them on their shit – someone who doesn’t want anything work-related from them.

THE MAGICIAN

I was in Las Vegas with a friend for a professional athlete’s birthday party. There were a bunch of celebrities there, including the magician.
He came up to us immediately. I had an idea of who he was but had never seen his show. My friend, on the other hand, was a fan. He kept trying to impress us by talking about all his toys, which I thought was really immature. Eventually we went back to his place.

He called me non-stop for the next two months, offering me whatever I wanted to see him again, but I never did.

THE MUSICIAN

I was headed overseas, at an East Coast airport on a layover, when all of a sudden my pussy went off – That’s a band, I said to myself, checking out a group of guys who had just entered the terminal.

Later on, when I was watching one of his shows from backstage, I looked out at the audience – women, young girls there with their dads, that kind of crowd. His girlfriend, who was sweet, was perfect for his image. I would just ruin it. That night, I ended our relationship. We were both crying – “I love you too much to let you leave!” he said. “But I love you too much to stay,” I said as I left.Though we often don’t want to admit it, norms and social pressures are very real. Everyone is shaped in some way by wider ideologies telling us how to work, how to think and how to have sex. And as people become more public and high profile, these pressures intensify.
“The running theme here,” Malorie tells me, “is that you have these people who connect with people in the adult industry – escorts, cam girls, whatever – because we’re the only ones who they can be themselves with.”

In many ways sex workers are a sort of pressure relief system for social and cultural inconsistencies.
In Malorie’s case, it’s a world without surprise – a place where nothing related to the human condition is bad or good. “Think about it,” she said, “Short of where the body’s buried, what’s the worst thing someone can tell me? That they want their asshole licked? So what. I’ve heard it all before, I’ve seen it all before. Nothing shocks me.”
That these relationships exist shouldn’t shock us either. 

Chauntelle Tibbals, PhD, is the author of Exposure: A Sociologist Explores Sex, Society, and Adult Entertainment. Follow her on Twitter at @drchauntelle.