When it comes to sex work, not many stories really compare to the excess of Belle De Jour’s tales of her time as a high class hooker – famously adapted into Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, starring Billie Piper.
But watch out for Gwyneth Montenegro’s book, 10,000 Men And Counting, which details how, after a stint of table dancing and brothel work, she became a high-class hooker aged 21 and charged wealthy clients 500-1000 Australian dollars (£273 - £546) per hour.
She spent money on clothes and cars and rented a swish penthouse apartment. From all of that, you’d think she’d lead a glamorous life. But things weren’t actually that great for Gwyneth, as she details in the tell-all book. She writes: ‘There are a lot of other books out there that glamourise the industry, but it's not the easiest profession to be in. Once you've done it, you can't take it back. It's not Pretty Woman. It's not like in the movies.'
She soon became an addict, and felt isolated and lonely: ‘The low point of my career was taking the cocaine and speed five times a week for about 6-8 months and just bouncing off the walls constantly on a high,’ the now-35-year-old told The Huffington Post.
‘When the drugs wore off it was crashing and feeling so isolated and lonely. I hardly had any friends and didn't know how to relate to people. I felt very alone in the world.’
Fed up of life being ‘a blur of money and drugs and French champagne’, she successfully trained to get her pilot’s license. However, after a diagnosis of kidney failure, she couldn’t re-apply to become a pilot, so she turned to the only way she knew how to earn money – sex work.
She retired aged 33 after meeting her current partner, and the book’s title is in reference to the 10,091 men she slept with during her time as an escort – 70 clients a month. But although she's learned a lot about what men want, saying: 'Most men really love to please their woman sexually. They want to know what pleases you and they want to deliver that,' she's happy to be out of it.
Now that she's out of it – she retired when she was 33 and is now an entrepreneur – she has some advice for other sex workers, and it's not all anti-choice: ‘It's not for me to say "don't do it". At the end of the day, financial pressures have forced most of us into doing something we dislike to settle the debts. Having said that I would strongly suggest that if there is an alternative, choose the alternative. The sex industry comes with it's own baggage that can affect you for a lifetime.’
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.