New Zealand Sex Workers on Their Clients’ Messiest Food Fetishes

Few things bring us more joy in this sad life than sex and food. And for some of us at least, there few things more satisfying than bringing the two together into a single, sticky, squashed banana fantasy. With that in mind, we asked the professionals about food fetishes: the irritating logistics, the murky childhood origins, the disastrous ideas, the cleanup.

Aunty Ava, madam and sex worker of 22 years

I once had a client who would bring in old bananas, kiwifruit and a plastic sheet, and he'd ask me to stand on the fruit while he licked and sucked my toes. You can imagine the slobbering and tugging in-between every little crevice. It's so sensitive that it took a lot of effort for me not to kick him in the face.

I'm really interested in how fetishes are developed so I asked the client how the fruit came to be. He told me he was on a school trip and he had a crush on one of his teachers. She was sitting underneath a feijoa tree, and he became fixated with the sight and squelching sound of the rotten fruit on the ground.

There's no judgement of people with food fetishes. Most things are fine but say the client wanted to insert chocolate into genitals—that's a health and hygiene issue. Say a client wanted head-to-toe chocolate sauce, you'd have to shower before sex because there'd be a condom issue.

Michelle, sex worker of four years, no longer in the industry

I once had a client who wanted a double booking—that's when two sex workers work together—and he asked me to pour champagne into the genitals of my colleague for a bonus of $300.

I gave the guy a 10-minute lecture about the dangers of thrush. The sugar content in champagne means it would have been a yeasty surprise just waiting to happen. I mean, it would've resulted in a fucking microbrewery in there. I may have not made the $300 but I think I made the world a better place.

I wasn't going to do it because it could mean I'd be out of work for three days. I don't get paid enough to psychoanalyse clients' fetishes, and I'm not going to do anything that would impact my work.

Gwyn, sex worker, video artist and dominatrix

Of all my video work, stuffing as much food as possible into my mouth in one sitting has always been the most successful. It could be five or six cheeseburgers or an entire pizza—it's the idea of gluttony and extremes that's clearly the turn-on there.

Verbalising what's going on is important too. "I'm getting really full, but I just can't help myself"—that kind of thing feeds into the idea of lusting for something, and food is often linked to sex. It's quite distinct from feeders though, where the fetish involves feeding someone until they're rendered immobile. There's a needing, reliance, and submissive motif. This is quite different.

Practically speaking I'll know when I'm doing the videos so I'll just skip a couple of meals before or after to make up for the giant pizza I'll be smashing into my face. And a standard video could take as little as 60 minutes, so the cost of the food is easily covered.

Kay'la, sex worker of 41 years

Once I was asked to be a sushi platter. I'd lie on a table and different foods would be placed across my body. I was a smart ass, I didn't want anything too sticky and I wasn't going to have any pomegranates—have you seen them? There was sushi, cream, carrots, glazed cherries, and chocolate pudding, a strange combination but it was no big deal, other than the showering.

God knows where that fetish came from. Personally the feel of food irritates me, but if a client has the money, I've got the time. We're in the hospitality industry I guess. We're here to help relieve people of their inhibitions, of their worries, and not to judge.

Blair, sex worker, porn star and video artist

Most fetishes come from childhood or where something's happened during a child's sexual awakening. You might see an ad campaign that features a woman with sex hair, in a clean bed, eating toast—there could be all these grown-ups running around loose with bread fetishes as a result—which is delightful.

My food experiences have involved puppy play. I've been the dog—labradoodles weirdly, and it's happened enough times for there to be a pattern—and there's usually the owner power dynamic involved. But yeah so other than having to bark in a cute way, I've had to lick water and eat food out of a bowl—that sort of thing. Turns out it's quite difficult to lick water out of a bowl in a sexy way. And then there's the whole, "do I try and be seductive, or do I act like a dog and get it everywhere?"

I haven't had that many food requests but it's different as a male body worker. There's the additional stress as to whether I'm going to be aroused enough and show it. Viagra is awful. There's nothing worse than flopping out.

Funny thing though, a lot of men are never more open than when they've cum with a whore. They'll come in really reserved and once they've finished they'll start telling you how they're broken because their dad didn't teach them how to play baseball as a kid.