escort diary® of Jolie: On screening - and why your first email tells me everything
I am going to tell you something that will either reassure you or terrify you: withing the first line of your email, I will know whether we are going to work.
Not guess... know.
Not because I’m psychic, but because I’ve been doing this for years, and years of reading first emails from strangers has turned me into a very specific kind of expert. Not an expert in desire or fantasy or what men want, an expert in how people reveal themselves when they think they’re being careful.
Here is what a first email contains, beyond the words.
It contains your relationship to boundaries. Did you read my profile, actually read it, the way you’d read something written by a person you’re trying to understand, or did you scan it for the parts that interested you and skip the parts that didn’t? I can tell.
I can always tell.
The man who read it asks questions that reflect what I wrote, or writes about his own worries and nervousness. The man who scanned it asks for things I explicitly said I don’t offer, talks to me about his kinks, makes comments about my attitude, or sends me the kind of message you'd usually only receive at 3AM from an ex you regret. This tells me everything I need to know about what will happen when I set a boundary in person.
It contains your relationship to women.
Not your politics, not your stated beliefs, not whatever you’ve learned to say in public, but the actual relationship you have with women when no one is looking at you.
The one that lives in how you phrase a request, whether you ask or assume, whether your language treats me as a person you’d like to meet or a service you’d like to activate. These are different sentences; they have different architectures. And the architecture is visible to anyone who has spent enough time reading both kinds.
It contains your relationship to yourself.
The men who write well, and by well I don’t mean eloquently, I mean honestly, are the men who know what I offer and what the same thing. They say: I'm coming to you because I’d like company, I’d like conversation, I’d like to be with someone who is genuinely interested in me for a few hours.
They don’t try to make me change my mind, become the exception, manipulate me into bending my will for the little scenarios they've concocted because they either didn't care enough to read the very detailed account of what I offer, do not care, or want to see how far they can test my boundaries to get some crumbs of power.
I am picky ans I know this. I know that the word picky sounds like a luxury that a woman in my profession cannot afford, and I know that the business logic says: take every booking, maximise revenue, save your preferences for your personal life. I understand this logic, and I sincerely and utterly reject it. I reject it because I have tried the alternative: I have taken bookings I knew within the first email were wrong, because I needed the money or because I thought I was being too selective or because I talked myself into believing the evening would be fine, and the alternative costs more than the money it makes.
It costs me my energy, my presence, my ability to show up fully for this person in front of me, for the next, for myself...
Every evening I spend with someone who treats me as interchangeable is an evening I didn’t spend with someone who treats me as specific, or that I didn't spend with my books, my other work, or my writing.
And I have learned, slowly and expensively, that the latter kinds of evening are the only kind worth having.
So yes, I filter.
I filter aggressively and unapologetically and with the full awareness that this means I see fewer people and make less money than I would if I said yes to everyone, if I offered more, if I was more flexible with my requirements, if I wasn't honest to a fault. I have made my peace with this arithmetic the way I’ve made my peace with every other expensive decision I’ve made in my life, which is: I understand the cost, I’ve decided the cost is worth it, and I’m not interested in being told I should feel differently by people who haven’t done the calculation from inside my body.
Here is what I am filtering for, and itt is simpler than you think.
I am filtering for reciprocity.
The entire purpose of my bookings, the whole thing, the reason I do this, the reason I’ve been doing this for years and still find it meaningful, is to give someone the space to be heard. Seen. Cared for. Without pressure, without performance, without the exhausting expectation that they need to be impressive or entertaining or any particular version of themselves. I offer a room where you can put down whatever you’ve been carrying and just be, and the being is enough, and nobody is keeping score.
I expect the same thing.
That’s it, that is the whole standard: not perfection, not eloquence, not a perfectly crafted email or an impressive job title or the right watch or the right wine or any of the external markers that people think I’m selecting for when I say I’m selective.
I am selecting for the man who walks into the room and treats me the way I treat him: as a person. Not as a canvas, not as a blank screen onto which he projects whatever fantasy he arrived with, not as a role in a scenario he scripted before he got here. As a person worth paying attention to.
And here’s the thing that I think people miss about the no: I am doing it for you too. When I read an email and I can see that what you’re looking for is not what I offer, I don’t just decline. I will happily say “I’m not the girl you’re looking for :)” and send you toward someone who is. Someone who will genuinely enjoy providing what you want, someone whose evening will be better because you’re in it, not despite it. There are thousands of excellent women in this industry, who will cater to certain wants and needs, who do it well, who would be thrilled by the booking that would make me drained and feeling like 600$ wasn't worth any of it.
Sending you to them is not rejection, it is the most respectful thing I can do for both of us. Because you deserve someone who is fully present and genuinely enthusiastic, not someone who is tolerating until she asks you to leave while giving you your money back. And she deserves the client who actually wants what she offers rather than the client who settled for whoever said yes first.
Everyone wins if I say no to someone who doesn't fit what I'm looking for, or if I don't fit what you're looking for.
That decision is the standard. It is not a test you pass or fail. It is a recognition, the recognition that you are a person who is going to treat this as what it is: two human beings agreeing to be real with each other for a few hours, in a room where neither of them has to perform, and where the generosity flows in both directions because generosity that only flows in one direction is not generosity.
It is service. And I am not, despite the technical classification, in the service industry.
I am in the people industry, and the people I choose to see are the ones who understand the difference.
