Thoughts and Musings

I haven't posted in awhile.  All of my posts were starting to feel the same, because well all of my sessions were pretty much the same.  If something unusual would happen, then I would probably be inspired but nothing that exciting has happened lately.  So I thought I would share some stats about my clients.  Almost all of my clients are immigrants from India.  They are either here for school, or are on a work visa.  There was one exception he was a middle aged divorced white man.  I have two regular clients, one I see almost every week, and one I see about once a month.  I got a lot of requests at first, and the requests have definitely slowed down to where I think this is more of a side gig than a possible career.  My regularly weekly client wants two hours,and often falls asleep during the session.  If that's what he wants, it's ok with me.  I still haven't paid for the official training, not sure I will at this point.  The plus is that I would get listed on two websites, with the possibility of more clients, but the cost doesn't seem worth it.    If you have questions, let me know, I'll be happy to answer them.

Touch Starvation is a thing

My fifth client

My Fifth Client 

Ok, so my fifth client was actually my second client, repeated.  He was he very polite young man, who has similar expectations with me when it came to cuddling.  However this week I had house guests, but luckily I also was dog/house sitting.  Also I was lucky  that he isn’t allergic or afraid of dogs.  We had a nice session in the basement while watching HGTV.  I’ve learned to set that alarm now, I’ll never forget again. I have seen him three times now, the last visit was also at a dog/house sitting clients house.  The last time he requested music instead of TV.  I played the country coffeehouse spotify playlist, it worked well for cuddling. 

My Fourth Client

My fourth client was the first person who had messaged me on the website.  He lived in California, but told me he travels often.  He let me know that he’d be in Washington, DC for business, and to please save the date for him.  I agreed.  It was an evening after work, and he had booked a hotel room near where I live.  Ok, great, but I let him know I’d rather meet him at a coffee shop first, and then decide if I felt comfortable.  We met at the coffee shop, he was already there doing work when I arrived.  We each got beverages and talked for a while.  After we finished, I felt it was ok we could have the cuddle session at the hotel.  We walked together the few blocks to his hotel.  He changed, and I put some mindless cooking show on the television.  He was pretty calm, but he did this annoying kissing thing.  I decided that going forward there would be no kissing of any kind with my clients.  I felt it crossed a line from platonic, to not so platonic.  He felt bad that he didn’t have enough to cover the time I was there.  Since I was hungry, I offered him to make up the difference with some food at the dinner.  He agreed.  He told me he doesn’t leave karma (aka reviews) on the site because he’s worried about the cuddlers he works with getting jealous.  At this point I have a few solid five star reviews, so I wasn’t worried. 

My third client

My third client was actually the second client I met.  We met for coffee on a hot day, and sat outside the coffee shop and talked about our lives.  He has been divorced sometime, and has a teenage son he sees on occasion.   He had been in a bad accident, but you couldn’t tell that looking at him as he had a miraculous recovery.  After about an hour, he asked about a session following our coffee, but since it was hot and we were outside I felt we were both too sweaty for a session.  Instead, we scheduled a session for the following Monday as his home.  He lives close to my office, which was convenient.  I drove over, and parked on the street.  I walked up and knocked.  He invited me in and offered me water, which I accepted.  I was just wearing my work clothes, which this day was a dress and a cardigan.  I had put on some shorts underneath.  He wanted the session in his bed with no music or tv.  I said ok, as long as we can chill and chat.  He was fine with that.  Almost everything he told me made me laugh.  He did tell me that he wished I had on thong shorts… I told him that was a little out of line.  He tells me he wants to see me again, but hasn’t made another appointment.  I get it, professional cuddling is expensive.

My Second Client

My second client was much younger than my first, but old enough that I wasn’t going to get in trouble.  He sent very authentic messages on the website and shared a picture on his profile.  I felt safe meeting him.  He shares my ideas of what cuddling should be, hanging out on a couch while watching TV or a movie.  He couldn’t host a session though because he lives with roommates and they make rules about guests.  Lucky for him, I live alone and get to set the rules on who comes and goes.   I let him I know I could host, but that the session would be limited to the couch.   He said that was all he expected.  Great! So I suggest meeting at the Starbucks near my house.  We sit at a table outside for a minute, and chat a bit.  He’s getting over a breakup, and that’s mostly why he wants cuddling so he gets touch while he’s healing.  I can empathize with that, as I know every time I’ve had bad breakups, I run to dance.  He offers to buy me a coffee, but I decline because I had a coffee at home that I hadn’t finished.  (Anyone who knows me would think, I must’ve been broken that day… what you refused coffee!!!)  So then we get in our cars, and he follows me to my home.  We go inside, take off our shoes, and get cozy on the couch.  I ask him if there was any music or shows he cared for.  He said he didn’t care.  I put on Bojack Horseman because that show is funny, and doesn’t require watching in sequence.  Over the hour we cuddle in about three different ways.  This was way more relaxing than the flipping that was happening with my first client.  At the end we stand up and hug, and I hope to work with him again.

My First Client

In talking with some of the more established cuddlers, they told me to be careful with members who have no reviews or karma as it’s called on the site.  They recommend meeting in public a time or two before a private session happens.  That makes sense for safety; there isn’t a lot of screening of new clients.  Members can get banned from the site for inappropriate behavior that doesn’t follow the published code of conduct.  However, if they haven’t actually had a chance for any behavior it’s hard to tell what kind of behavior could be encountered.  I figure that I can’t be a professional cuddler if I never meet potential clients, so when I got a kind message from an engineer who was local I figured it was worth the risk.  I was a little hesitant when after I accepted he said that he required certain clothing, and no jewelry, and offered clean sheets or I could bring my own.  That wasn't enough for me to decline though, I still went forward.  The clothing my client wanted clothing was shorts and t-shirt/tank top, which at least was clothing that made sense for cuddling.  More comfortable and less clothing meant maybe more skin to skin contact, and active wear if you sweat in it no big deal. We met by a Subway that was a few blocks from his home, and just sat for a while and chatted about our expectations, and why my client wanted a cuddling session.  It all seems very safe, so I agree to the session.  We drive back to his place, and he puts a visitor parking pass in my car.  We walk in, and he offers me a private area to change.  I set a reminder to return the pass on my phone.  Then we start cuddling.  He doesn’t want music, and just seems to want to move around a lot.  It feels more like contact improv to me then cuddling.  There were new positions about every 2 minutes!  Eventually I say “Gee, it’s hot, can we just relax? And don’t you think some music might be nice?”  He agrees, and gets up to put on some Kelly Clarkson music, and turn up the fan.  Then we just lay still for a while, which was the nicest part of the session.  After about 5 songs have played, I start thinking that maybe my phone didn’t sound an alarm.  Oh no, I was right, we are 30 minutes overtime.  Lesson learned, set an alarm or have a clock that is visible or a tv show playing that you know the length of.  I let him know I won’t charge him for the extra time, since it was partially my fault.  It was my first official session, and I knew I would have a lot to learn.  We walk out together so I can return the parking pass.  Later that day we both give each other 5 star reviews.  And given how review driven the site is, I am grateful for the review.

Connecting with Possible Clients

My account was approved the next step was to fill in my profile, and message with clients.  I immediately got half a dozen messages.  The site alerts users on the homepage when new members have joined.  Many messages were from people who lived far away, but a few were from people who actually lived close by.  The site prefers for the members to communicate primarily with the site’s own messaging interface.  They even include the option to upload pictures with your communications.  I found that most people wanted to move off of communicating on the site quickly.  The site does monitor messaging, mostly so they have an idea of scheduled sessions and when they should expect to get paid.  Part of the user agreement as being listed on as professional cuddler on this platform is that after a session the site gets 15% of the session fee.  I get why they want to see the messages, and since everything is monitored, I get why clients who don’t even post their pictures on the website would want to connect in a different way.  I decide that as long as we confirm our sessions on the site, side conversations with the phone or email or text messages isn’t breaking the rules.  At first I gave my number to a few possible clients.  Then I thought, oh maybe this isn’t the best idea.  So I signed up for a new gmail account and a new google voice number that I can use for this purpose.  The most surprising thing to me about starting this business is how some clients  wanted to pay me just to talk to me.  

Why Cuddling?

I remembered seeing articles and videos about professional cuddlers.  Like this article from the Huffington Post.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cuddlist-professional-cuddler_us_58e652f9e4b06a4cb30fdce6

It blew my mind that people both pay and are paid to cuddle.  I let the idea go to the back burner, and didn't really think about it until I felt like I kept drowning in debt, and was having the hardest time swimming out of the hole I kept digging myself into.  I tried to get a new better job the traditional way, and kept hearing nothing but no thank you.  Then I remembered the professional cuddling, and was like oh this is totally something I could do.

I thought about how lucky I am, that touch is a regular part of my life.  I have a lot of friends who will cuddle and hug.  There are lots of partner dances I do that heavily rely on touch for communication.  Also sometimes I pet sit or visit kittens and puppies, and animals make awesome cuddle buddies.

So I posted the thought to Facebook, I think I need to become a professional cuddler.  Just the idea generated 75 reactions and 45 comments.

Wow, I was blown away by the support of my friends.  They supported this vision in a way I couldn't ever had imagined.  

Then started my research on how does someone actually become a professional cuddler.  

The first site I looked into was Cuddlist.com  

It has a training to become a professional cuddler, and offers a hosting site for a profile for around $40 to advertise your services for potential cuddling.  I signed up for the free webinar on July 3, and I plan to do the training.

I figured that wasn't the only option, so I kept looking and found CuddleComfort.com

This site offers the option to just write an application to be a professional cuddler, no training necessary.  I'm not sure how they decide who gets accepted and who doesn't, but I was grateful to have been accepted.  They have a code of conduct that you follow as a client and as a professional on the site.  They just ask for 15% of the session fees after you have booked session, and to use the site for most of the communication especially setting up bookings so they can keep track if you honoring the contract.  They are really strict about the code of conduct and will kick people off the site who don't follow the code.  

I send in the application and was accepted as a professional cuddler on June 14,2018. I instantly had potential clients contacting me, and my Facebook friends supported this even more than the idea of being a professional cuddler.