Different Worlds

What My International Client List Taught Me About Belonging

Some statistics answer a question. Others ask one. This one has been quietly bothering me for weeks.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, around one-third of Australians were born overseas.

But among my clients, almost seven in ten were.

Interesting.

But then I noticed something else. The longer a client remained in my life, the more likely they were to have been born somewhere other than Australia.

Among the gentlemen who returned to see me more than once, nearly three-quarters were overseas-born. Among those I'd seen five or more times, it was almost four in five.

Somehow, I seemed to be accidentally collecting international regulars. I briefly considered rebranding as "Jasmine Amour: Foreigner Whisperer."

It made me giggle.

But it didn't really answer the question.

That was the moment I stopped thinking, "Well, that's interesting." And started wondering why…

I should probably explain where all of this came from.

This finding wasn't something I went looking for. It simply wandered into view while I was putting together the statistics for my previous blogs. I've discovered that spreadsheets have a peculiar habit. They answer the question you sat down to ask... then quietly slip another one under the door as you're packing up to leave.

As it turned out, it was one of those questions that led me somewhere I wasn't expecting.

~ ~ ~

Naturally, I started trying to explain it away.

Perhaps it was simply my appearance. Long dark hair, fair skin, and curves in the obvious places. Beauty standards vary all over the world, and maybe I just happened to tick more boxes in some cultures than others.

Or perhaps it was my personality. Over the years, more than one gentleman has remarked that they really like "my nature." To this day, I'm still not entirely sure what they mean by it.

The best I can gather is that they're referring to the way I come across: sweet, soft, feminine and gentle. Perhaps they are drawn to my shyness, my quietness, or the curious contradiction of seeming like the girl next door while working in such an overtly sexual role. Maybe those qualities resonate differently depending on where someone grew up.

Those ideas seemed plausible enough.

But the more I thought about them, the less convinced I became. After all, attraction might explain why someone chooses to see me once. But it doesn't really explain why they come back five, ten or twenty times. The statistics weren't simply suggesting that overseas-born gentlemen were more likely to find me attractive. They were suggesting they were more likely to stay.

And that felt like a very different question altogether.

~ ~ ~

Of course, there's every chance I'm overthinking all of this. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. But once the question had lodged itself in my mind, I found it difficult to let go.

I started mentally flicking through the gentlemen I'd known over the years. The ones who had gradually become part of the rhythm of my working life. The familiar names that appeared on my phone every few weeks. The lunches, the dinners, the long conversations that wandered far beyond anything physical. And one by one, I realised just how many of them had grown up somewhere else.

India.

Malaysia.

England.

South Africa.

Singapore.

Italy.

Different accents. Different childhoods. Different cultures. Different stories. On paper, I had very little in common with most of them.

Yet, somehow, they all felt strangely familiar.

That was the part I couldn't explain. We had every reason to feel worlds apart. Yet being with them often felt... unexpectedly easy.

~ ~ ~

Eventually, it occurred to me that perhaps I was asking the wrong question. I'd been wondering why so many overseas-born gentlemen seemed to feel comfortable with me. Maybe the more interesting question was why I seemed so comfortable with them.

That wasn't something I'd ever explored before. If you'd asked me whether I had a preference for one nationality over another, I would've shrugged and said, “I don’t think so.” But once I started paying attention, I realised there was often a subtle difference in how I felt.

For reasons I still don't entirely understand, I seem to become less self-conscious around gentlemen who grew up somewhere else. It's difficult to explain.

Perhaps it's because we don't share the same cultural shorthand. We didn't go to the same schools. We don't have the same childhood references. We weren't raised with quite the same unspoken social rules.

Somehow, that removes a layer of pressure I never even realised I was carrying.

There's less worry about saying exactly the right thing. Less fear of being misunderstood. Less of that strange feeling that I have to perform the version of myself that I imagine someone else expects. Oddly enough, the very things that should make conversation more difficult often seem to make it easier.

I've spent quite a bit of time reflecting on why that might be. I don't think it's because overseas-born gentlemen are inherently kinder or easier to talk to than Australian-born ones. Some are. Some aren't. They're just people, like anyone else.

But I do wonder whether our differences remove some of the expectations that exist when two people grow up in exactly the same culture.

Could it be that these cultural differences give us permission to step outside the little social scripts we've been following our whole lives, and instead simply be ourselves?

Sometimes having too much in common feels strangely exposing. When I meet an Australian-born client, I suddenly become aware of myself in a way I don't particularly enjoy.

Am I saying the right thing?

Do I sound intelligent?

Am I funny enough?

Interesting enough?

Am I making a good impression?

I should qualify here that this doesn’t apply to the Australian-born clients that feel like kindred spirits (shy, introverted or a little awkward, like myself). I’m talking about the ones who remind me of the cool, confident boys from high school.

By contrast, when I'm sitting across from someone who grew up on the other side of the world, something shifts.

The pressure disappears.

Perhaps it's because we already expect there to be differences.

Different slang.

Different cultural norms.

Different communication styles.

We're often operating with different assumptions about how conversations are "supposed" to flow.

And somehow, that's rather freeing.

If there's a pause in conversation, nobody seems to panic. If one of us has to explain a joke or a cultural reference, it isn't awkward. It's just... interesting. If we misunderstand one another, we laugh, clarify, and carry on. If we don't immediately click, there's an easy explanation. We're simply from different worlds.

The conversation becomes less about trying to prove that we're alike, and more about genuinely getting to know someone whose world has been different from our own.

Oddly enough, removing some of the pressure to connect often makes connecting feel easier.

I stop performing.

I stop analysing.

I stop trying so hard.

And that's usually when the real connection begins.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether this wasn't really about nationality at all. Perhaps it was about something in me that had been there long before I ever became an escort.

~ ~ ~

It’s probably no secret to you now that I've always been a fairly shy person. Not in the sense that I can't hold a conversation. Quite the opposite, really. Put me in a room with someone who makes me feel comfortable and I'll happily chat for hours.

But there's another kind of shyness that has followed me for most of my life. The quiet awareness of wondering whether I'm saying the right thing. Whether I'm coming across the way I intended. Whether people are judging me. Whether they like me at all.

It's an exhausting little voice to carry around.

Looking back, I think it probably began early in life. Despite my love of learning, school wasn't always an easy place for me. Like so many young people, I spent far too much time worrying about fitting in, saying the wrong thing, or feeling just a little different from everyone around me. I suspect that feeling never disappeared entirely.

Perhaps that's why I find cultural differences so unexpectedly comforting. When someone grew up somewhere completely different, I stop expecting myself to know all the unwritten rules. There's no pressure to recognise every reference. No expectation that we'll share the same memories. No assumption that we should instinctively understand one another.

Instead, we become curious. We ask questions. We explain things. We laugh when something gets lost in translation. And somewhere in all of that, I seem to forget to be self-conscious.

~ ~ ~

The funny thing is, the longer I knew these gentlemen, the less I thought about where they had come from. Instead, I found myself noticing the things we had in common.

One missed the family he'd left behind. Another carried the weight of wanting to make his parents proud. One worked extraordinary hours and rarely gave himself permission to slow down. Another had spent years building a life in Australia and still, somehow, felt like he was living between two worlds.

Different stories.

Different backgrounds.

Different passports.

Yet underneath it all, so many of the same hopes, worries and insecurities.

I began to realise that the things making us feel connected probably weren't cultural at all. They were probably just… human.

Perhaps that's why our conversations so often drifted towards childhoods, families, vulnerabilities, ambitions, disappointments, and dreams. Because underneath our different accents, we weren't trying to understand a nationality. We were simply trying to understand another person.

Suddenly, all the things I thought made us different became far less important than the things we shared.

We all want acceptance.

We all want understanding.

We all want to feel comfortable being ourselves.

And I can't help wondering whether that's one of the reasons these connections so often become regular arrangements. When someone feels understood, particularly in a place where they're still finding their feet, perhaps they're more inclined to stay.

~ ~ ~

The more I reflected on it, the more I found myself wondering whether the common thread had never really been nationality at all.

Perhaps it was simply this… Many of the gentlemen I've come to know over the years have, at one point or another, found themselves adapting to a world that wasn't entirely their own.

They've learnt a new culture.

A new way of speaking.

New social cues.

New expectations.

They’ve learnt what parts of themselves to soften and what parts to preserve.

Some arrived in Australia as children. Others much later in life. Some are here temporarily for work. Others are proud to now call themselves Australian citizens. Some have accents so thick that I occasionally nod along and pretend I understood the first half of the sentence. Others carry in their voice, barely an echo of home.

Every story is different.

But I imagine that, somewhere along the way, many of them have experienced that gnawing feeling of wondering where they fit. Of learning the unwritten rules by watching everyone else first.

It's a feeling I know surprisingly well. Not because I grew up in another country. But because I've often felt like an outsider too.

Perhaps the people who seem furthest from our own world are sometimes the ones who make us feel most ourselves. Maybe that's why conversation comes so easily. Because, in different ways, we both know what it's like to be finding our place in the world. I think we breathe a little easier when we realise we're not the only person who doesn't quite fit.

Perhaps outsiders have a funny way of recognising one another. Maybe we spot one another across the room.

~ ~ ~

Perhaps I'm completely wrong. Maybe I've simply spent too long staring at spreadsheets. But whether my little theory is right or not, one thing has become abundantly clear to me. Some of the warmest, easiest and most enduring connections I've made through this extraordinary job have been with gentlemen whose lives began somewhere very different from my own.

We do not share the same story.

But we were both curious enough to listen to one another's.

Perhaps the statistics did answer a question after all.

Just not the one I thought I was asking.

Until our worlds cross again,

Jasmine x