What My Husband’s Unconventional Job Meant For Our Sex Life

You know how there are women who just exude sexuality? They’re also usually the ones who claim to be super comfortable in heels, or stand naturally with one leg turned out in "fifth position," or have that extra little arch in their backs, always. That’s totally not me. I’m just regular, or "medium," on the sexy scale. Not a sexpot, not particularly unsexy. Honestly, it’s not something I’d ever given much thought to. Until I did. My husband Joe and I are writers. When we first moved to Los Angeles, in our late 20s, we set out to write and direct a film about sex workers. Hell-bent on authenticity, we tried to meet a few real-life "pros" since, until then, our points of reference were basically Klute and Pretty Woman. After weeks of fruitless interview attempts (they all thought we were undercover cops), one of Joe’s brother’s sketchy friends gave us a hot tip: “Look for an ad that says DRIVERS WANTED in the back of the LA Xpress [the then-free weekly sex industry classifieds]. Call the number. You’ll get the job, then you can interview as many women as you want.” One quick phone call and an even quicker "interview" at KFC (I kid you not) later, and Joe was behind the wheel of our Subaru Legacy Wagon driving “Nikki” to her first gig of the day (a doctor, a Bel-Air mansion).

I waited up until 3 a.m. to hear every juicy detail — of which there were few. According to Joe, the women “weren’t very nice” (meaning they had no interest in small talk). But the logistics of it all were fascinating. Who knew that pimps were virtually obsolete? Apparently, Craigslist handily facilitated the self-employment model for sex workers. The dude from KFC who hired Joe was a dispatcher — he worked for the women, not the other way around. Joe’s job entailed driving women to their clients, walking them to the door (to make it clear a man would be waiting outside in case of shenanigans), then driving them home. For this service of a “ride and protection," Joe was paid, in cash, exactly 20% of the night’s "take." This turned out to be, for our post-college broke asses, a shit-ton of money. I told my husband, right then and there, I wanted him to drive sex workers forever. Some of our friends were shocked I was so supportive of Joe’s new job. Wasn’t I jealous? Wasn’t I worried he’d succumb to the libidinous yen all men have, 24/7, whether they cop to it or not? And here I was, handing it to him on a silver platter. Cheerleading, even. The truth was no. I was so staunchly un-jealous, it was kinda weird. The hotter and wilder the women, the better. Enormous fake boobs? Bring 'em on. Low-back tattoos of winged dragons or butterflies? Awesome. Pantera blasting through the speakers of our Subaru? Loved it. I thought it was cool. My husband was a quasi member of a badass tribe of sexual cowgirls and, by proxy, so was I.

After a month or so of driving, one of the "regulars," who called herself Sin Dee, recruited Joe to work exclusively for her. She ran a business that specialized in bachelor parties and she needed a reliable driver/emcee for her stable of rotating twentysomething girls. He was, she said, the perfect candidate: He didn’t smell, he drove a dependable vehicle, he didn’t do drugs, and — most importantly — he didn’t try to hit on the girls. He said sure, and came home crowing about his big promotion. And what a promotion it was. Instead of waiting in driveways doing crossword puzzles and enduring every variation of speech impediment courtesy of NPR, Joe was now working a Mister Microphone, selling and buying back sweaty dollar bills to hoards of drunk and horny businessmen, agents, and overgrown frat boys. Every Friday and Saturday night, my husband saw a trio — sometimes a quartet — of confidently naked women do A) an intro striptease, B) a sexy girl-on-girl-on-girl dance that ended with a female ejaculation, and C) a round of "fun and games," when they did things like stick licorice rope up their vaginas and, for a price, let the guys eat it out. I’m the least insecure person I know. As mentioned, I encouraged my husband to take this job and begged him to keep doing it forever. I had never doubted my attractiveness to him, or my attractiveness in general, not in the 10 years we’d been together by that point. But little by little, after tales of tequila body shots, whipped cream "around the worlds," and nipple/ass/clit tattoos — the doubts began to creep in. Should I get a tattoo? Would that suddenly make me go from "medium sexy" to "highly sexy"? I asked Joe what he thought. He didn’t think so — what tattoo would I even get? — and I’d for sure regret it and then have to laser it off, which always leaves a scar, he’d heard. I dropped the tattoo idea. But still, there was the nagging thought that maybe I should be trying harder to be sexier. Maybe spice things up a little. So I went to the crazy expensive, 100-square-foot lingerie store in our hipster neighborhood and — for the first time in my life — bought a matching lacy bra and underwear set. The next Tuesday (we’d fallen into our definitely-once-a-week sex time happening on Tuesdays, which we referred to as Super Tuesdays), I put on the lingerie in the morning to get used to it. By 10 a.m., I was itching from the lace and the tags I couldn’t rip out because it would tear the lace and blow the $200 I’d spent on the damn getup — not to mention the massive sandpaper wedgie riding up my ass. But it was cool. I carried on for the sake of sexiness. When showtime came, I tried hard to strut around and be confident. In my mind I was a Victoria’s Secret Angel. But I felt like a total idiot. Maybe not an idiot, but very much unlike myself. Within two minutes, the lace was on the floor, never to be worn again.

Then I thought I’d try a different tack. Okay, lingerie was never my thing — but candy? I’m a full-blown addict. My dream dessert is a roll of chewy Sprees followed by a mango Hi-Chew chaser. If I could somehow make myself sexier by incorporating sugar into my sex life, I was signing up, ASAP. What did I have to lose? A tiny bit of skin on my inner labia, that’s what. Needless to say, using a stale Twizzler from my desk drawer instead of freshly opened licorice rope was not my most genius moment. And it was a downhill spiral from there. Whipped cream curdled. Mentos made me numb. Nutella and pubic hair do not mix. Declaring food-based foreplay a failure, I decided I was gonna go for broke and look into this whole female ejaculation thing. Joe swore up and down — especially after getting hit with the stuff from across the room — that that shit was 100% real. And it wasn’t pee. After consulting with my best lesbian friend, who confirmed that, yes, female ejaculation is very real and very much achievable by any woman with the will to learn — Joe and I set up shop in bed, naked, watching YouTube tutorials on our laptop. We tried every method: fingers, tongues, you name it. After 45 minutes of serious concentration, we burst out laughing at how ridiculous we felt. Chances are, I’ll never be a sexual cowgirl like Sin Dee and her posse. But after jumping through every hoop to try and be sexier, it became pretty clear to me that I was good the way I was. And Joe made it even clearer that what we had was great for us: Super Tuesday, once a week.

Lisa Addario is a writer, director, and producer. Addario co-wrote and co-directed Amateur Night, which opens in theaters in NY and LA on August 5 and in select theaters and on VOD August 12. She is currently filming Coup d'Etat, which she also co-wrote and co-directed.