Sex work during pandemic: ‘People want a human being they can relate to’
When demand dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, sex worker Jenna Love reinvented herself, becoming a ‘virtual escort’ for all the lonely hearts — doubling her business.
NSW
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Peering through the estate agency windows at the advertised houses for sale, Jenna Love fantasises over the idyllic rambling rural property in the rugged west of Sydney’s Blue Mountains.
The 31-year-old is saving with her husband and is only too aware that it is thanks to her profession — from which she can earn up to $12,000-a month – that she will soon afford their first home.
Jenna is an independent sex worker whose flame-coloured locks, soft physique and affable nature means she charge up to $500-a-hour selling sex in-person, but only $200-a-hour virtually in NSW.
When the coronavirus struck, the landscape of sex work radically transformed with demand for in-person work drying up overnight.
She re-marketed herself offering a virtual girlfriend experience and to her own surprise solicited a 57 per cent hike in demand from men wanting to talk, seek companionship, or perform sex acts all while gamely adhering to social distancing etiquette.
“If you want to be intimate, you have to pay good money to be with me,” she said from her home on the fringes of the Blue Mountains.
“With sex work you can get lonely clients but COVID has created a lot more sad, lonely people who have lost their support network. I’ve seen a lot of extreme sadness among clients on video calls.
“I’ve lost my in-person business completely, though it’s slowly returning, but my virtual work has taken off.
“I‘m not going to pretend we only talk, a lot now do, but I’m a sex worker, but if you’re going to send me a dick pic, you have to pay me for it. Let’s face it, I’ve seen a lot so some might call me an expert.
“I love my job, I’ve some lovely clients and because of COVID I’m working extra hard to make up for the loss of sex work.
“I get bigger bucks in other cities like Melbourne but of course I’m not able to do that at the moment, so I have to rely on online sex work instead.”
The trained actress and theatre director she can earn up to 10 times the average weekly wage, even though it fluctuates wildly, and with sex work grossing $30 million in Australia annually, according to the Australian Federal Police, she is keen for a slice of the pie.
Before COVID pressed the pause button on in-person sex work, she earned up to $5000 a month performing online sex work with clients and when demand is there she can now bank up to $7000, selling the girlfriend experience and online services.
But this does not compare to the money she earned for in-person services.
At the height of the pandemic between March 27 and June, she provided 64 separate services to 50 clients including video calls, sexting and offering dick pic ratings from $20 a time. Clients paying for access to her own porn clips and services around “just being mates” have increased, but not in comparison to the amount of work she now puts into her online work.
“I was nervous about offering online services at first as I wasn’t experienced with it,” she said.
“The different forms of sex work each have their own pros and cons and require their own skill set.
“Being a virtual girlfriend is nerve wracking, it’s different work, you have to be on form, make sure the house is tidy, it’s harder to pick up on body language signals from behind a screen, there’s no cuddling.
“It turns out I must be okay at it, because they come back and their faces light up when you turn on the screen.
“I’m not your typical sex worker, I haven’t travelled the world, I grew up in Western Sydney, I’m more the porn star girl next door.
“Right now people want a human being they can relate to, a girlfriend, there’s a lot of loneliness out there.
“The good thing for me is there’s less wear and tear on the body and you don’t get COVID because there’s no touching or kissing … but the bad news is you can sometimes fall for the lovely ones.”
Jenna, whose husband is a drummer, became a sex worker eight years ago as a student when a sugar daddy paid her $2000 to spend a few hours together in a hotel room.
It paid the bills and she realised when she went all the way, selling sex in the city proved lucrative thanks to word of mouth and advertising on forums and websites.
In sexually liberal Sydney, brothels, strip clubs and massage parlours abound and Jenna can usually work from home or from hotels but in fluctuating times, particularly during COVID, she’s had to rely on online sex work to pay the bills.
Pre-COVID, touring cities from Newcastle, Melbourne and Perth proved more lucrative for full service sex work compared with stripping or dominatrix work.
“Clients are friendlier in smaller towns and you feel more relaxed,” she said.
“In my line of work, if you’re sick, or put your back out, you can sometimes only make $1000 a month, but in the last few months I‘ve pushing quite hard because we want to buy a four bedder, my husband works in a warehouse and is a drummer, we need space for his kit.
“I’m working seven days a week, virtual sex work is exhausting, you can see the same client three times a day.
“I’m a hopeless romantic, I develop crushes easily.
“Online you get to know clients better, the tough part is trying not to fall in love.”