Why some clients only book me when they're in crisis

Not every booking I receive is about pleasure, desire, or even companionship in the traditional sense some are quieter, more urgent, less about indulgence and more about survival. The messages come late, usually short and polite, emotionless at first glance, but I’ve come to recognize the signals that tell me everything a sudden message after months of silence, a familiar name asking, “are you available tonight?”, with no small talk. These are not the men looking for seduction or celebration they’re unraveling inside, caught in a fight with their wife, reeling from a death in the family, hiding from a scandal splashed across headlines, or drowning in a panic attack that won’t pass, and in those moments they are not CEOs or royals or investors they are just human, stripped down and desperate to be somewhere safe, even for a little while. What they’re truly booking isn’t intimacy they’re not paying for pleasure, they’re paying for permission to fall apart, and I’ve learned how to become the calm in their storm.

There was a particular client a hedge fund manager from Singapore who contacted me three times over two years, and each time it followed a personal tragedy first, when his mother died, then after he lost nearly $4 million overnight, and finally, after his public divorce. He never touched me, never asked me to undress, never tried to impress me he’d open the door, pour two glasses of whiskey, hand me one, and collapse into silence, where I’d sit beside him for hours, not speaking unless he did. Another client, an older French businessman, always booked the same suite at the Address Downtown, giving the same instruction every time “Don’t speak unless I ask you to, don’t touch me, just be here.” I’d read a book quietly while he stood by the window watching the city glitter, lost in thoughts he never shared, and he once told me, almost apologetically, that I was the only person in Dubai who didn’t want something from him. These men, who can buy anything and control everything, come to me not because I offer something extravagant but because I ask for nothing at all, and they don’t want solutions or sympathy, they want to exist without being judged, to be fragile without shame, to talk or cry or simply sit in silence, knowing I will stay.

In a city like Dubai, where image is currency and emotion is weakness, being vulnerable is a luxury most powerful men can’t afford in public, so they carry their status like armor, reputations carefully built and fiercely protected and when that armor cracks, they look for places where they can let go. That’s what I am to them not an escape from life but a return to being human, where the work becomes deeply emotional, far more than transactional, and I hold space for breakdowns that aren’t allowed at boardroom tables, witness truths they can’t share with wives or friends or therapists. Sometimes I’m the first person they’ve admitted their fear to in years, and sometimes I just sit in silence with them while they try to remember how to breathe, and what they pay for isn’t sex it’s peace, presence, and the quiet comfort of being seen not as a client or a symbol, but as a man unraveling under the pressure of holding everything together. And no matter how many luxury hotels I walk into or how many zeros are attached to a booking, I never forget sometimes, I am not the fantasy they want, I am the reality they need.