office celebrates CIFF 62

ANDREA’S DIARY ENTRY

Friday, March 13th 2026

“I promise I’m almost done” is what I say whenever I have to leave him. Goodbyes have never been harder than when he watches me pack condoms he knows he won’t use and slip on tights he knows he won’t be slipping off later that evening.

What he doesn’t know is how I can’t close my eyes while lying in the bed of another man. How my arms fall weak, and my legs paralyze. It’s a kind of comatose state I enter when a strange man enters me.

I don’t close my eyes because I don’t want to enjoy it.

The darkness swallows me and allows me to escape to a better place, back to his warm embrace. I see the spit I left behind on his chin shimmer in the light after a passionate kiss and how he turns away in an extraordinary effort to suppress his natural calling. It shows that he cares, that he still wants me.

And for some strange reason, I open my eyes again. Staring back at a loveless transaction, longing for the love I left behind.

ANDREA’S STORY

In the 2009 movie Chloe, Amanda Seyfried plays a beautiful, young escort hired by Catherine, a suspicious wife who decides to test her husband’s fidelity. A plan destined to fail, I might add.

During their first meeting, the wife, played by Julianne Moore, is shocked to learn that most of Chloe’s clients are married. She hesitates before asking, “How do you do it?” After a brooding silence, Chloe meets Catherine’s gaze. “I try to find something to love in all of them.”

Not me. I thrive on their weakest moments and revel in their deepest insecurities. Like a succubus, I feed on their fractured lives just to get me through the day. But it wasn’t always like that.

In the beginning, I felt virtuous. A courageous do-gooder offering touch, desire, and intimacy to anyone who felt worthy of physical connection and brave enough to walk through those brothel doors. In a space that breeds false identities, you learn not to trust anyone. Cynicism embedded itself deeper into my psyche with the same script recited five or six times a day:

“My wife wouldn’t understand.”

“She’d leave me if she knew.”

“The kids are too young.”

“We have an arrangement.”

“I’m single.”

Sure.

The brothel becomes a fleeting sanctuary where vice feels like home and sin feels like safety, yet guilt is the only thing you take with you when you leave. People often say to me, “But it’s all a performance, isn’t it? You must be pretending to like them.” If only it were that simple.

When you convince yourself you’re doing something meaningful, it feels like your duty to glue together the pieces of a broken stranger. You share vulnerabilities, empathize with their loneliness, and satisfy their hunger for touch, and suddenly, you become human.

By the time I met Jodi, I was already withering away, my self-worth holding on by a thread. Seeing clients had become an excruciating task. By that point, I’d realized I wasn’t strong enough for the work. Setting boundaries wasn’t second-nature for me like it was for the other girls. Every no eventually became a yes. And then the timer would go off, forcing me to watch my naked reflection in the mirror and confront reality.

Every time I met that sad girl in the mirror, I would ask, What the fuck are you still doing here? And she would answer very carefully, Luxury. Travel. Time. And she’d whisper to herself, Luxury. Travel. Time. I wore the title like a badge of honor after I revealed myself as a sex worker, careful not to let him see my dignity slipping through the cracks all over my body. So when Jodi asked me if I had come to London just for the workshop, I nodded my cocky head. “I have the time and money, so why not?” “How do you do it?” he asked outside the pub, where I realized how much older than me he was. “I’m giving back to society. I’m giving people a chance to feel loved.” That was months ago now.

Since Jodi and I fell in love, he’s watched me leave my best only to come back home with what was left: an empty vessel of a woman, apathetic and pitiful. He’s cried on my shoulder, desperate for me to see his worry, pain, and jealousy. “Are you going to leave me for some rich asshole?” He asked in pleading tears. “Never.”

Sex work isn’t about empowerment. It’s about the pursuit of power. And in the end, if there ever is an end, you don’t always get it.

“You can’t just pay for us when you want us and then dispose of us when you don’t.” Chloe (2009)

JODI’S STORY

That’s the thing with photography: a camera can giveyou access to people and moments you would never normally have the chance to witness. In my time as a photographer, I’ve always been amazed by how it can take you on a journey, bringing the unimaginable into your life. People, stories, and emotions all ebb and flow. It’s easy to take the beauty of this for granted.

Sometimes the stories we think we’re documenting begin documenting us back. The distance between observer and subject disappears so quietly you don’t notice until you’re already emotionally invested. When the story is no longer framed by a viewfinder, but by the person standing in front of you.

It was on a cold winter morning, assisting a friend running a street photography workshop in London, that my camera brought someone into my life who would affect me in a very real and personal way. At that point, it became clear I was no longer observing the rollercoaster. Instead, I was on it.

I never expected to fall in love with a sex worker. As a young man, I had strong feelings about sleeping with prostitutes, shaped by trips to places like Thailand where sex tourism is rampant, and my male friends indulged without a second thought. I was always the odd one out, unwilling to take part.

When I met Andrea, I was stuck in the monotony of internet dating, like so many others. This chance meeting challenged me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I never saw her for what she did. I saw her for who she was. Passionate, lively, determined, dreaming of a bigger and brighter future for herself. Yet, as our love grew, the relationship became more fragile.

I often felt like a man without a country. When you grow up with deep-rooted family trauma and lose your safety net as a teenager, you learn to hold on to what you love with a grip that is almost too tight. You become hyper-aware of every shift in the wind, always waiting for the person who matters most to fade into the distance. So when someone finally felt like home, my first instinct wasn’t comfort. It was fear.

Because our relationship was long-distance, she often reminded me how lucky we were that her job allowed us frequent trips across the English Channel. When I held her in my arms, I could forget the estranged intimacy she shared with other men. But when we said goodbye, the darkness crept back in. My mind became a gallery of worst-case scenarios: How many are there today? Is she safe? Will some rich, handsome man sweep her off her feet and take her away from me?

It was a vicious cycle I couldn’t break free from. Learning to express myself without putting my needs first became our greatest challenge. She fought for independence while I fought for reassurance.

“Do you think of me as a client when we have sex?” I asked one evening after she came home from work. It was a desperate plea, proof that our intimacy was still a choice, not a habit. She comforted me with unwavering love, though sometimes it met the wall of her exhaustion. In the quietest hours, when her work felt like it was winning and old memories of loss rose to the surface, I reached for the only truth I knew how to hold onto.

“Tell me you love me,” I’d say. “Tell me you love me like the work doesn’t exist.” I needed to hear it to believe I was still the center of her world. I was terrified that if I stopped asking, silence would become our only language. But when she said it, through the distance, the differences, the defenses, it became the only thing in the world that wasn’t a transaction.

We existed in a space that was raw, confronting, and relentlessly transparent. And despite the constant struggle and emotional upheaval, her work somehow brought us closer. It fast-tracked our relationship. We had to navigate intense jealousy and resurfacing insecurities time and time again. However, it created an honesty and openness between us that built a trust and emotional connection that couldn’t have been forged in a conventional relationship.

She says she’s almost done, and so I stay. I stay because despite the jealousy, the frustration, and the ghosts of my past, her love is the only country I have. “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)