“I say a little prayer before every booking.”

Not to saints, not to my Buddha, but to my own Whore’s God.” 

I know, Turkey again. Last one, I promise.

Think of this as the closing scene: gods, stones, and one goddess of my own invention before we bring it all back home.

Fatima my guide, was half-historian, half-gossip columnist. She stitched ruins together with a grin. Even when we didn’t stand there in person: Troy, Pergamon, Aphrodisias, Didyma, she conjured their dramas so vividly I could hear sandals squeaking on marble. Who fought, who fucked, who got punished. They just had better architecture.

At Ephesus, everyone posed in front of the Library of Celsus like diligent scholars. Fatima leaned in with the quality tea: a tunnel once ran from the library straight to the brothel across the street.

“Darling, I’m off to study philosophy” basically meant “see you in two hours, lighter wallet, sticky toga.”

Knowledge above, blowjobs below. The ancients weren’t saints. They were efficient.

Fatima kept the myths rolling. From Aphrodisias (we didn’t go, but I kept the picture in my head): Aphrodite, goddess of love and lust, born from sea foam, technically from Uranus’s chopped-off bits, the only deity who can say she was literally made from balls. Patron saint of working girls. Respect!

Back at Ephesus again, Artemis got her Wonder of the World, virgin huntress, twin of Apollo, famous for turning peeping Actaeon into venison. The original block-and-delete, only bloodier.

Perge and Aspendos were theatres that still hum if you listen right. I thought of Apollo: sun-bright, music god, Greek hot boy; who flayed Marsyas for daring to beat him in a jam session. If Apollo lived now he’d be thirst-trapping on Instagram and blocking you for liking his ex’s selfie.

Pamukkale / Hierapolis came soft: travertine terraces like a wedding cake from heaven. People waded in like they were soaking in divinity. Leave it to humans to turn sacred water into a day spa.

And then Cappadocia. No Greek Gods carved in stone, just the land itself, rude and spectacular. Towers, cones, spires; blunt ridges and smooth hollows; valleys curved like pussies or butt cracks.

Everywhere I turned were cocks disguised as scenery. Nature outperformed every sculptor. If the ancients had walked here, they could’ve skipped the statues. Desire was already rising from the ground. 

Finally. Istanbul. Down in the Basilica Cistern, I found Medusa: two stone heads half-submerged, watching from the water. Fatima wasn’t there, but I remembered what she told me: raped in Athena’s temple, punished not by the rapist but by the goddess, condemned to centuries of bad PR. I didn’t see a monster. I saw a woman too much for their egos. If my god had stood beside her, she’d have whispered: “Babe, you weren’t cursed. You were proof they couldn’t handle you.”

So where does that leave me? Surrounded by gods of beauty, war, wisdom, music, but none for my trade.

If I had a god, she wouldn’t live on Olympus. She’d squat in the tunnel between the library and the brothel. Smudged eyeliner. Cigarette in hand. Laughing at excuses. Blessing the room with better lighting.

Her incense: aftershave and nervous sweat.

Her offerings: crumpled cash, a ping on the banking app, envelopes.

And yes, I pray to her, not with hymns, with honesty:

“Let every horny booking align with my limited availability. Let him be on time, reliable, kind, and above all, I feel safe.”

When the night goes smoothly, I picture her sprawled on velvet, muttering: “You’re welcome, darling. Don’t blow it all at Sephora.”

 I don’t use that word lightly. Whore was designed to wound ,which is exactly why I lean into it. The same way “Slut” became a rally cry, or “bitch” twisted into a compliment. Take the word they threw like a stone, polish it, and wear it like jewelry. Pairing whore with god isn’t polite. It isn’t safe. But it sticks.

And what about them?

While I’m praying to my god of working girls, who are they praying to? Nobody clutches a holy book on the way to slip their cock into a stranger or got their anus fingered. Maybe they need their own deity: A Client’s God.

Guardian of “I hope she looks like her photos and ”please let her actually be into me”. Protector of “she laughs at my jokes” and “she doesn’t check the clock”.

Patron of “let her be horny for me, like the porn clip I just watched”. If I have the Whore’s God, surely they need theirs, a deity of nervous anticipation, guilty smiles, and that secret afterglow only the two of us understand.

Because my god doesn’t demand worship. She demands good luck. She reminds me, in every ruin and every myth and every phallic rock formation, that pleasure is power, and power, like sex, is never free.

Back in Sydney now. Rested. Ready. And she still walks with me, eyeliner smudged, amused, whispering the same blessing every time I open the door:

“You’re welcome, darling. Now go earn it.”