When a client leaves without paying, they don’t just break an agreement. They also test the trust that many sex workers choose to place in the people they meet.
Some stories are written simply to let go.
Others are written because staying silent would feel like the greater mistake.
This is one of those stories.
A few days ago, a man in his thirties contacted me about booking a session. We spoke on the phone for a while. I explained how I work, my rates, and what he could expect from our time together. I told him my fee was €200 for 1 hour and that, if he was still interested, I would send him all the details via WhatsApp so he could read them carefully before making a decision.
That has always been the way I work.
I never try to convince anyone.
If someone chooses to see me, I want it to be because they genuinely want the experience, not because I persuaded them.
A little while later, he messaged me to say he had decided to come. The only thing he asked was for a bit of patience because the GPS showed a longer journey than he had expected.
I told him not to worry.
“I’ll be waiting for you at home.”
Then I simply carried on with my day.
That morning, I had decided to cook beef stew. I’m not exactly a great cook, but every now and then I enjoy spending time in the kitchen, taking things slowly. My mother had been waiting for me to finish so we could have lunch together, and I was curious to see how the dish had turned out.
While the stew was simmering, my client still hadn’t arrived.
Later, I received a message that, looking back now, carries an irony I completely missed at the time.
“Don’t leave me stranded.”
I replied exactly as I felt.
“Don’t worry. I’m home. I’m not in a hurry. I’ll be here waiting for you.”
That’s simply who I am.
I’ve always believed that a session begins long before two people undress. It starts with trust. It starts with how we speak to each other and how we welcome someone who has travelled a long way to meet us.
Time passed.
Then a little more.
Then even more.
I sent him a couple of messages.
He stopped replying.
My mother had already grown tired of waiting. She kept asking me to sit down and eat, while I insisted that he would surely arrive any minute. Eventually, we had one of those tiny family disagreements that happen in every household. She wanted lunch. I didn’t want to rush through my meal only to have the doorbell ring halfway through.
Eventually, after waiting for well over an hour, I gave up and sat down to eat.
The moment I took my first bite, my phone rang.
“I’m here.”
I remember smiling to myself.
“Well… he really has caught me at lunchtime.”
I told him I had just started eating after waiting for him for over an hour.
Honestly, I understood that he was probably eager to begin. He had ridden his motorbike all the way from Madrid to Torrejón de la Calzada, and it made perfect sense that he might be tired.
I wasn’t expecting a grand apology.
But I did expect a small gesture.
Something as simple as:
“Finish your lunch. I can wait five minutes.”
I’m almost certain I would have replied:
“No, it’s fine. Come in.”
The point wasn’t whether I would have kept him waiting.
The point was the gesture itself.
It never came.
At the time, I didn’t think much of it.
Today, looking back, that tiny moment has taken on a completely different meaning.
Because people often reveal who they are through the smallest gestures, long before the big ones arrive.
When he came in, he explained that he’d been riding his motorcycle and that’s why he hadn’t replied to my messages.
It sounded perfectly reasonable.
I didn’t suspect a thing.
The session itself unfolded naturally.
We talked a lot. We discussed sexuality, how pornography has shaped many men’s expectations about sex, and why listening to the person in front of you is far more important than copying what you’ve seen on a screen. A few times, I corrected certain habits and encouraged him to slow down.
He listened.
He seemed respectful.
Nothing suggested how the afternoon would end.
Over the past few days, I’ve replayed the final minutes of that session countless times.
There are details that seemed perfectly ordinary then but look very different now.
Although there was still time left, he suddenly insisted he wanted to climax.
That surprised me.
People who book longer sessions usually enjoy what comes afterwards as well: conversation, a massage, a few quiet moments before returning to everyday life.
Afterwards, I suggested he lie down for a few minutes so I could finish the session with a relaxing massage.
He refused.
He insisted he needed to leave.
At the time, I simply assumed he was in a hurry.
Today I’m no longer so sure.
Then something happened that I can still remember word for word.
He stood up and casually said:
“My money is in my motorbike.”
Without thinking, I laughed and replied:
“That sounds like someone who’s about to leave without paying.”
He laughed too.
He asked whether anyone had ever done that to me before.
I told him it had happened years ago, but only rarely. I explained that I still preferred trusting people, that I had never liked asking for payment before a session because, for me, trust is part of the experience.
I also told him that sex workers talk to each other, that people who behave like that quickly earn themselves a bad reputation, and above all, that disappearing without paying is an enormous act of disrespect.
He nodded again and again.
“Yes… yes… of course.”
Even now, I sometimes wonder what was going through his mind while I was talking about trust.
He then took a shower.
When he came out, the money was no longer in the motorbike.
Now he needed to stop at a cash machine.
I told him that wasn’t a problem.
I’d go with him.
I even suggested we drive together in my car.
At first, he agreed.
Then, suddenly, he changed his mind.
He preferred to take his motorbike alone.
People have since asked me why I didn’t photograph his licence plate.
Why didn’t I ask for his ID?
Why didn’t I stop him from leaving before he paid?
The answer is very simple.
Because I don’t want to live like that.
I don’t want to welcome every new client, assuming they’re planning to deceive me.
I don’t want my work to begin with suspicion.
I followed him in my car.
By the next street corner, he had disappeared.
I drove around the block once.
And that was the moment I realised he wasn’t coming back.
Over the past few days, I’ve asked myself many times what really hurt the most.
The answer has never changed.
It wasn’t the €200.
If he had genuinely been in financial difficulty, one phone call would have been enough.
One honest message.
One sincere apology.
“Cristina, I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”
I’m convinced we could have found a solution.
Money wasn’t the issue.
The real pain came from realising that someone had shared such an intimate experience with me while choosing not to honour the agreement we had made.
The real pain was discovering that someone could ask for trust while already preparing to betray it.
I’ll admit that, afterwards, I had a few less-than-elegant thoughts.
With more sarcasm than anger, I even caught myself thinking that perhaps one day his motorbike might end up costing him the €200 he had decided not to pay me.
Eventually, the anger faded.
What remained was something else.
For a few minutes, I wondered whether I should start asking every client to pay in advance.
Whether I should photograph identity cards.
Whether I should photograph licence plates.
Whether every new client should now be treated with suspicion.
That thought saddened me far more than losing the money.
Because I realised what the real theft had been.
He hadn’t only tried to take €200.
He had tried to take away my willingness to trust people.
That is something I refuse to give him.
I’ll continue believing that most people are honest.
I’ll continue waiting when someone tells me they’re running late.
I’ll continue welcoming people with kindness.
Because I refuse to let one dishonest person decide who I become.
I’m writing this because I refuse to normalise the idea that leaving a sex worker without payment is somehow amusing, clever or harmless.
It isn’t.
It’s a profound lack of respect.
And, above all, it reveals the kind of person someone chooses to be when nobody is forcing them to do the right thing.
If you happen to recognise yourself in this story, I don’t expect an explanation.
Explanations come before silence.
I simply hope that one day you’ll understand something very simple.
Money can always be earned again.
Trust can be rebuilt.
But dignity, once willingly left behind, is far more difficult to recover.
