Insight from Vancouver’s most highly-rated escort

Shocked that one in five Vancouver men have paid for sex? We asked a local escort what she thought of the numbers*. Here are just a few of Angel’s answers

angelOur survey said that 22 percent of male Vancouverites admitted to paying for sex. Does that ring true for you?I think it’s probably much more.Really?I’m not talking about if they’re 18, but if you go 25 and over I think it’s probably higher than 70 percent, especially if you’re saying ‘ever.’ If you were talking about just the last year, then possibly 22 percent might be accurate but if you are saying ever then I think it’s above 70 percent—I think it would probably be as high as 85 percent.So 85 percent of men have paid for sex? Or just some sort of sexual act?I wouldn’t say it necessarily had to be penetration. Essentially, it’s paying to be with somebody for the purposes of intimacy.Okay. What percentage of men pay for your time but then don’t actually have sex with you?I think probably about 20 percent.So what do they want, then?I think a lot of the time, and this sounds really strange, but what a lot of men are lacking is appreciation. It’s put out there all the time that women feel underappreciated, but we never hear that about men, and the truth is men feel the same way. But they can’t say that because they’ll be judged by society—you know, “you pussy,” that kind of thing. ‘What do you mean you just want to cuddle? What do you mean you feel under-appreciated?’ Those are distinctively feminine traits in our society. I think what really happens is that a lot of men that I see want somebody to hold the space for them. They want to be able to be themselves without having to wear a pretense and know that they’re just accepted for who they are.It sounds like they just want a girlfriend experience—are a lot of the men single?My demographic is predominantly single. I think a lot of people are just craving touch as well. We are in a world where people don’t really have physical contact anymore. We don’t even really shake peoples’ hands, much less hug somebody. We are on our iPhones constantly and we don’t even really make eye contact. I think there’s a dichotomy: We feel so connected because we have 800 friends on Facebook and our phones beeping with text messages every three minutes, so we have this illusion of connection. But it’s such a superficial connection, and I think the soul is really deprived of that deep connection, that love, that intimacy, that je ne sais quoi that really makes us human. I think a lot of people just feel lonely. Surrounded by people but completely lonely, not understood. Nobody truly knows who they are, and everybody only knows a snippet of what they’re willing to share.What did you think about the one in four Vancouverites who haven’t had sex in a year?I think it’s definitely possible.And the 9 percent of men who claim never to masturbate?I mean, I have heard people say that, but I’ve doubted it. Even when people tell me that they never ever ever do, I usually don’t believe them because I think that there’s a shame associated with it from when they were younger. Maybe they were raised in a sort of way where that was religiously wrong, or they just somehow view it as that means they simply can’t have a partner. Sex is a really odd thing in our society—it’s simultaneously glorified and vilified. It sells everything yet at the same time there’s a double standard. You’re expected to be a certain way, but if you’re sexually promiscuous that somehow negates people’s perception that you can also be intelligent or that you can also be nurturing.Do you think the porn industry’s prominence on social media and the web has influenced Vancouverites’ sex lives?I think real relationships have the benefit of being real, of being physical. But so many of us live in our heads. One of the really peculiar things to me is that I never set things up through texting. I always need to speak to somebody, but it really blows my mind the number of people that insist on texting. I’ll tell them to give me a call, and they say, “I’m too shy to talk on the phone.” How do you expect to actually have a face-to-face conversation if you can’t even pick up the phone?Do you see any difference in out-of-towners compared to Vancouver locals?It might be just because they’re playing in their own back yard and they want to be a little more cautious, but local people, even if they’ve booked multiple hours, still want to order takeout or not go out because too many people know them and they don’t want questions. For people from out of town that’s not an issue, so they’re more relaxed in that sense. Vancouverites, in general, tend to be more demanding with what they want than men from other cities. They want to get their money’s worth, for lack of a better phrase. I’m not sure what it is, and I find it peculiar because Vancouver seems to be such a relaxed city on the surface. You would think in Toronto they’d be a little bit more uptight, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. They seem to be much more liberal if they’re from back east than they are here.*Angel was found as the most highly-rated escort on theeroticreview.com

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