The Loneliness Iceberg

If there’s one thing that the past year of pandemic and quarantine has taught me it’s that loneliness is a hell of a drug.

I have friends. I have family. I have two really weird pets that are constantly begging for attention. I leave my house regularly to safely run errands. I see clients - both new friends and regulars.

But there’s this viscous separation that exists now between everyone.

For years, everyone has been afraid to touch one another. Afraid to get close. Afraid to be seen getting close. Afraid of being judged, everyone is concerned about the tertiary effect their actions will have on family’s health or their friends’ health or their friends’ family’s health.

This kind of low frequency stress built up and isolated us all. Supposedly no man is an island, but sometimes recently I’ve begun to doubt that. Maybe no man should be an island, but if we’re not careful it’s entirely possible to just drift…drift…drift…until the shore, once so close, now could be pinched between your fingers. You’ve got your own private island devoid of risk and danger, congratulations, how are you gonna celebrate?

I believe that loneliness is more complex than our brains can process it in its entirety.

We take the little bits. We take the embarrassment – “I’m alone and everyone else isn’t. No one wants me.” We attempt to swallow the uncertainty - “I’m lonely, and I don’t know if I will ever know another way to be.” We choke on the utter despair of “Does anyone even know I’m in pain? Is anyone paying attention?”

To be lonely is to feel as though your connection to humanity has been severed.

The worst part is the person who paid attention to you the least is yourself. By the time your brain comes around to “I’m lonely,” it’s probably been eating you alive for weeks, months, years. Like an iceberg. We only see the tip. Meanwhile it has this whole giant, horrifying life under the surface.

There is a very common perception that escorts only exist for married men to cheat on their wives with. This might surprise you, but we actually exist…well…we exist in general. As people in our own right.

I see a variety of clients for a variety of reasons. Some people are single, some are married, some are separated, some are divorced, some are poly, sometimes they’re long-distance, sometimes they’re don’t-ask-don’t-tell. Sometimes they just need company. Sometimes they just need to be touched.

I truly believe there is no better sex than sex with someone you are deeply in love with.

But that takes a lot of work (and a little luck) to get there. Even if that’s what you’re looking for the process of dating and sleeping with people and break-ups and ghosting and bad chemistry and bad dates and weirdos and awkwardness and unrequited feelings and all the stuff the happens in the meantime sucks. Even if you are there, marriage – like life in general – is complicated and you can’t always just have the good stuff without reconciling it with the messy stuff.

And here you are trying to do everything right, and you’re more lonely than you have ever been in your life. Even though everything is open. Even though we are at greater liberty to give hugs and handshakes…what do you do with that loneliness that built up? How do you reconcile all those months or years where you weren’t touched? What do you do with that entire iceberg that looms under the surface?

I want to hold someone. I want to touch someone. I want to feel close to someone. I understand loneliness because I have been lonely. Sometimes for weeks, sometimes for years. I know what it feels like to need to be touched by someone just to remind yourself that you exist.

I know what it’s like to want to just lay together and not talk. Feel me breathing quietly as I sink into your chest. Brush my hair behind my ear as you pull me closer. And we can say more in those few moments of silence than with a thousand words.