My name is Sacha. I'm 48 and I define myself as a sexothérapute (French wordplay combining sex therapist and prostitute), a mix between prostitution and sex therapy. Many sex workers feel they have an unrecognized social purpose: We often say to ourselves that we should be covered by health insurance. After all, we're dealing with some of society's sexual problems. Everyone's a bit of a sex therapist when they're a hooker.

My clients don't come to me to have a good time on a night off. They're women who feel they've had sexual difficulties, or who need to regain respect for their bodies. It's an ongoing thing, over several months, or even several years. Let me make it clear right away that I'm not a typical representative of the profession. There are between 30,000 and 44,000 sex workers in France, and 85% of them women. And, among the men, more than eight out of 10 serve gay clients. There are only a handful in my situation.

"My journey: I don't sell my body, I sell a service"

In my former life, I was a senior expert in the environmental field. For a long time, I worked for the WWF on reintroducing bears in the Pyrénées, in urban ecology organizations, for chambers of agriculture... I was also an environmental educator in high schools. Then I went through a sort of mid-life crisis: I'd had enough of a wage-earning job where you're given your paycheck without any recognition, and you have to keep your mouth shut. I was burnt out, got a divorce and changed my life.

For a long time, my sexuality could be qualified as curious. At the time I started out, I'd already been exploring BDSM [bondage, domination, sadomasochism], role-playing, erotic festivals, etc. with my partners. The idea grew along with the variety of my personal practices. And then there were a few signals.

One morning in 2012, I was on the train going to work in Paris, with three women who took the same trip every day and had become friends. One of them said to me, "It's my daughter's birthday, she's 20, and her friends and I have decided to throw her a surprise party. We'd planned to have a male dancer jump out of a big, gift-wrapped box and do a striptease for her, but we're a week away from the date and the dancer has left us in the lurch. I thought of you – could you take his place?"

At the time, I wasn't into it at all. She knew I was open-minded on the subject, but I'd never broached the subject of my sexual intimacy with her. I thought I had to get something off my chest, so I asked her: Why me? "It's obvious, you reek of sex!" I didn't know if it was a compliment, but I got paid for being the only man at a girls' night out and playing a butler in a sexy outfit.

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