As with any other industry, escorting has a range of words that don’t always have an obvious meaning to people not familiar with them..
Working stuff
AW - AdultWork, a commercial sex work online directory that features escorts, cammers, porn producers etc. Popular in terms of the number of users (workers and clients) without being particularly popular in terms of being liked by either.
Brothel - legally, anywhere two or more people offer sex, not necessarily at the same time and not necessarily for payment. Within sex work, it mostly refers to somewhere where at least two people work at the same time, usually with someone else deciding who works when. Also known as a ‘parlour’ (some brothels are licensed as massage parlours) or a ‘sauna’ (even though not all saunas are brothels).
Camming - doing live sex shows for remote clients using a webcam or similar.
Car meet - having sex in (almost always) the client’s car somewhere. If you’re going to do this - many people don’t - then make sure someone else knows the car’s number plate.. and that the client knows that someone else knows it. One variant is dogging where the client expects there to be an audience.
Duo - two workers see one client. May or may not involve any sex between the workers.
GFE - ‘girl friend experience’: a marketing term indicating caring about your clients or much more commonly, pretending to. Doesn’t indicate any particular sexual act - from kissing to bareback - no matter what anyone tries to tell you.
Hustling - looking for clients in places like bars, finding someone interested in being sexual with you and only then mentioning that there’s a price.
Incall - the client comes to you, whether that’s somewhere you rent as a workplace, a hotel room, or your home.
Outcall - you go to the client. Some people restrict where they’ll go, for example saying ‘hotels only’.
Parties - a handful of workers are paid to attend and be sexual with (usually) around three times that number of paying clients over the course of two or more hours. At most, an organiser pockets the difference between how much the clients paid and how much the workers get, but it’s also possible to have worker-run parties where all the income is split between them. If there’s only one worker, that’s a gang-bang.
PSE - ‘porn star experience’: a marketing term indicating that the booking will be all about the sex, as in a porn film. Doesn’t indicate any particular sexual act - from anal to bareback - no matter what anyone tries to tell you.
Punter - a client. The usual US term is a John.
Streetwork - looking for clients on the street or similar public place, often resulting in car meets.
Sugar - in theory, being paid a regular income / having living expenses paid by a client (’sugar daddy’) in exchange for a number of - almost inevitably sexual - meetings. In practice, most so-called daddies are TWs, and most of the rest are excessively demanding. Doesn’t indicate any particular sexual act - from kissing to bareback - no matter what anyone tries to tell you.
Touring - seeing incall clients somewhere else, for example by booking a hotel room in another town/city for a day or two and advertising your availability there on those dates.
TW - Time waster: someone who promises you the world but couldn’t deliver a pizza. They get off on the fantasy that you might see them and/or enjoying wasting your time. Spotting them quickly is a very useful skill to acquire.
Ugly Mugs (UM) - a service run by the UK Network of Sex Work Projects that shares details of clients to avoid.
Whorearchy - the damaging and horribly mistaken idea that some sex workers are better than others. Foolish people in numerous different groups - escorts, street workers, cammers, dominatrices, strippers - tend to put themselves at the top of it, despite all being seen as ‘whores’ etc by wider society.
Sex stuff
A-levels - anal sex. On US sites, you might see it referred to as Greek.
Bareback - fucking without a condom.
CIM - come/cum in mouth, i.e. OWO to the point the client ejaculates in your mouth. People willing to swallow the semen will often add swallow. If you kiss the client with it still in your mouth, that’s snowballing.
Facial - one way or another, the client ejaculates on your face. (Don’t get it in your eyes!) If there’s more than one client doing it, that’s Bukkake.
Happy ending - as in ‘massage with a..’: masturbating the client to ejaculation.
Nuru - a massage involving lots of body contact made slippery by an expensive lubricant. Will usually have a happy ending.
OW - oral sex on the client with..
OWO - .. and without a condom. On US sites, you might see oral referred to as French.
Pegging - fucking a client with a dildo, usually one in a harness.
Reverse oral (RO) - the client gives you oral sex.
Rimming - licking the arsehole. Make sure you know who’s going to be licking who before agreeing to it…
Scat - playing with shit / poo / faeces. Make sure you know who’s going to be pooing on who before agreeing to it…
Splosh - food play, possibly including sitting in it, smearing it, etc etc, and sometimes even eating it.
Watersports - playing with urine / piss / pee / wee. Make sure you know who’s going to be peeing on who before agreeing to it…
Handkerchief code
Much more common for male escorts serving the gay market, it comes from the 1970s practice of having coloured fabric in back pockets: the pocket’s side and the colour indicated what sort of sex the wearer was looking for.
All colours - saying that you’ll do any and all of the below (and probably some other things too..)
(Dark) Blue - anal.
Brown - scat.
Light Blue - oral.
Red - anal fist fucking.
Yellow - watersports.
In the original code, left side indicated the ’top’ (e.g. the one fucking the other) and right side the ‘bottom’ (e.g. the one being fucked). In ads, it’s vastly more common to just say, for example, ‘red top’ to indicate that it’ll be you sticking your hand up the client’s bum.