History Main / PlatonicProstitution

* In ''ComicStrip/KnightsOfTheDinnerTable'', Chad had a girlfriend whom he hadn't told about his roleplaying hobby out of fear of ridicule. But when Patty and the other members of his groups harp on him about telling her the truth, he finally relents and offers to invite her to a game. Instead, he hires an escort for an hour to show up and pretend that she's his girlfriend. Turns out that Trish ''[[ConvenientlyCommonKink loves]]'' roleplaying games and lets him have an extra forty-five minutes free before she gets called away. After she leaves, though, Patty lets Chad have it, having seen right through the charade (for one thing, her hair was the ''wrong color''). In a follow-up strip, Tank ends up spending over two hundred dollars to have Trish on a date and play Battleship for a few hours.
* While spying on a target in ''ComicBook/ThePunisherWelcomeBackFrank'' story arc, Comicbook/ThePunisher paid a prostitute two hundred dollars to eat lunch with him at the restaurant and forget the entire thing -- he would have been too obvious if he had been there alone.

* One of the ''ComicBook/RoadToPerdition'' stories has Michael O'Sullivan visiting an underage prostitute named Juana who he wants information from concerning his nemesis Connor Looney. For obvious reasons, he doesn't do anything with her, but instead gets the information that he needs from her and leaves her with enough money to leave if she wants to.
* ''Comicbook/{{Transmetropolitan}}'' had a rather strange but heartbreaking example. Spider solicits two young boys who are prostituting themselves on the street, paying them with food for an interview about their "business". The heartbreaking part comes in when one of the boys asks if they can go to a restaurant that has toys.

* In ''Film/{{Deadpool}}'', Wade initially hires Vanessa to "put balls in holes," aka play Skee-Ball at an arcade. At the end of the night, he cashes in his tickets for a Anime/{{Voltron}} ring that he then trades to Vanessa for another few minutes... wherein they do have sex.

* ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': [[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E1InThroesOfIncreasingWonder While alive]], Louis de Pointe du Lac regularly employed the services of a high-class prostitute named Lily [[TheBeard so he could be seen having a relationship with a woman]]. Once in her room, though, he just talked to her, using her as some kind of a therapy session. However, when the two are alone with Lestat de Lioncourt in his living room, Lily does give Louis fellatio until Lestat [[ForcedSleep makes her go to sleep]].

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'':

* ''Series/InterviewWithTheVampire2022'': [[Recap/InterviewWithTheVampire2022S1E1InThroesOfIncreasingWonder While alive]], Louis de Pointe du Lac regularly employed the services of a high-class prostitute named Lily [[TheBeard so he could be seen having a relationship with a woman]]. Once in her room, though, he just talked to her, using her as some kind of a therapy session. However, when the two are alone with Lestat in his living room, Lily does give Louis fellatio until Lestat [[ForcedSleep makes her go to sleep]].

** After Tywin explicitly tells Tyrion he can't bring Shae to court, Tyrion keeps her safe in an undisclosed location that can be reached via a tunnel connected to a brothel. Tyrion visits Alayaya, the prostitute whose room connects to one end of the tunnel, pretending to stay the night but instead sneaking off to be with Shae. Alayaya says she likes the alone time a lot and has been using it to teach herself to read. Perhaps the first time someone has been TheBeard for a member of the same gender! Of course, [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished Cersei then has her whipped because she fell for the bait]].

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', Homer is taking Santa's Little Helper out for a last night of debauchery before having him neutered, which includes hiring a canine prostitute for him. Homer asks the bitch's owner, who is also a prostitute, if she's up for some air hockey while they wait. She tells him she's $350 an hour, to which he replies "It's a deal!" and rushes into the nearby arcade while the prostitute drags her feet to stretch the time.

* In a fourth season episode of ''Series/{{Californication}}'': Hank asks Trixie (a call girl he was friendly with) if he could just pay her to be nice to him for a little while. He then apparently falls asleep with his head in her lap while she strokes his hair. When he wakes up, he finds that she's gone and had left the money he gave her behind.

May be a consequence of the customer being asked NeedAHandOrAHandjob

* In an episode of ''Anime/SamuraiChamploo'', TheStoic Jin falls for a girl when he sees her standing on a bridge and discourages her from jumping (characteristically enough, he does this by informing her that the water is too shallow and the drop too short -- she'd most likely just wind up breaking a leg). He later finds out that she was contemplating suicide because she'd been sold to a whorehouse to cover her husband's gambling debts, and after shaking down Mugen for cash, he buys his way in to see her -- in order to try and convince her to leave her husband and run away. They eventually ''do'' end up having sex, but only after it becomes clear that she's fallen for him as well.
* In the ''Doll'' manga, one of the main characters owns a sophisticated male robot designed for sex, but refuses the robot when it comes onto him, much to the robot's confusion (turns out he has bigger plans for him).
* In ''Manga/BladeOfTheImmortal'', Magatsu hides out at a brothel occasionally, since he's a wanted man, and befriends one of the girls there. However, while he does share a bed with her, he refuses to touch her out of respect, even though O-Ren makes it clear she loves him and wants them to have sex.
* Kenji does this in ''Manga/TwentiethCenturyBoys'' in order to gain access to [[spoiler: Professor Shikijima's daughter]].
* In one of the side stories written for ''Manga/EmmaAVictorianRomance'', a prostitute propositions the lonely-looking young opera singer protagonist at the pub. He spends a pleasant evening with her -- by buying her dinner and having a nice chat.
* ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'': Everybody just chalks Colonel Roy Mustang's frequent visits to Madame Christmas's place up to {{Handsome Lech}}ery. They are wrong, he's actually nice inside. The proprietor is his aunt and adoptive mother, and he uses the girls as an information network.

* Gintoki in ''Manga/{{Gintama}}'' is maneuvered into this situation with Tsukuyo. (To make a long story short, he was promised free drinks.) Tsukuyo assumes that she's supposed to sleep with him to pay him for saving Yoshiwara. Gintoki is appalled at the suggestion. It would have been a nice, friendly evening after that except for Tsukuyo's alcohol intolerance and subsequent violent behaviour.
* In ''Manga/InoHeadGargoyle'', when Saejima's feeling really depressed, he calls up his regular, the "Little Grey Alien", just to hug and comfort him.

* One of the ''ComicBook/RoadToPerdition'' stories has Michael O'Sullivan visiting an underage prostitute named Juana who he wants information from concerning his nemesis Connor Looney. For obvious reasons, he doesn't do anything with her, but instead gets the information that he needs from her and leaves her with enough money to leave if she wants to.

* ''Comicbook/{{Transmetropolitan}}'' had a rather strange but heartbreaking example. Spider solicits two young boys who are prostituting themselves on the street, paying them with food for an interview about their "business". The heartbreaking part comes in when one of the boys asks if they can go to a restaurant that has toys.
--> "You forget they're just kids."

* Creator/{{Quino}}: Done twice in the ''Pocket Men'' collection. A man, unhappy with his wife, approaches a hooker to take home, only to be revealed that he wants someone to taste his wife's LethalChef concoctions. Another strip has a man approached by a streetwalker, thinking about his loving wife, realizing his wife loves to chat, and bringing the hooker home to have a conversation with her while he enjoys some sleep.

* In ''Film/TaxiDriver'', Travis hires an underage prostitute, Iris, but only because he wants to talk to her and convince her to give up that life.

* ''Film/LethalWeapon'': Martin Riggs does this once. After a conventional "john picks up hooker" scene, they watch The Three Stooges.
* Used in the ''Film/HaroldAndKumarEscapeFromGuantanamoBay'' movie. Kumar first hires some prostitutes (on Neil Patrick Harris' dime) for regular reasons, but ends up just spilling his guts about how much he misses his ex-girlfriend to them.

* ''Film/{{Enjo}}'': Late in the film when his mental state is going downhill, Goichi visits a hooker in a brothel. All they do is talk for a while, with Goichi saying how lonely he is.
* In ''Film/{{Unforgiven}}'', the protagonists are working for some hookers and while the others are taking part of their pay in sex, Creator/ClintEastwood's character is having heart to hearts with the one who got cut up.
%%* ''Film/{{Deceiver}}'' has this in the crucial flashbacks.

* In the Bill Murray movie ''Film/WhatAboutBob'', Murray's character hires a hooker to telephone his psychiatrist's answering service and pretend to be the psychiatrist's sister.

* ''Film/MilkMoney''. A group of young boys try to hire a prostitute to let them see her body.
* In Creator/WoodyAllen's ''Film/MightyAphrodite'', Lenny visits Linda trying to convert her. They [[spoiler:end up in bed, but only because they both try to console each other, and much later]].
* In ''Film/{{Memento}}'', Leonard hires a prostitute to [[spoiler:trick his future self for a moment into thinking that his wife is still alive]].
* ''Film/ShootEmUp'' features a prostitute hired by the main protagonist to nurse a baby. The "platonic" part is dropped after they have sex (without him paying her) and even before that it's clear they have a mutual attraction to each other.
* The same thing happens in ''Film/TheOrphanOfAnyang'': A worker hires a prostitute to look after an abandoned baby he came across.
* In ''Film/DarkCity'', J. Murdoch has lost his memory, and the only evidence of his past that he can find suggests that he was a serial killer who targeted prostitutes. He's convinced that this can't be true, so he goes home with a streetwalker, and only hangs around long enough to prove to himself that he doesn't feel any urge to kill.
* The film version of ''Film/{{Perfume}}'' has Grenouille hire a prostitute when he is testing if he can capture the scent of a human being by enfleurage. When she finds it creepy that all he wants to do is wrap her up in lard-covered bandages, she attempts to leave but he kills her to continue his experiment.
* This is the only trope played completely straight (the premise, even) in the ''Film/DeuceBigalow'' movies.
* In ''Film/{{Titanic 1997}}'', Jack Dawson's drawings of nude women are of French prostitutes acting as models. Which isn't to say he might not have had sex with them, too, it's just not the main reason he hired them.
* In ''Film/BreakfastOnPluto'', Kitten has a client at a peep show who doesn't want her to act sexual, but instead only wants to talk. [[spoiler:Said client is Father Liam, who came to confess to her that he was her father, and to give her her long-lost mother's address]].
* In ''Film/{{Klute}}'', one of call girl Bree Daniels' regular clients is an old man, who just wants companionship from her.
* The protagonist of ''Film/TheHillsRunRed'', in his quest to find a lost horror movie of the same title, sets out to speak to the director's daughter, seemingly the only person connected with the film who hasn't disappeared. He finds her working as a stripper, and gets a private dance from her so he can talk to her alone, but because the room is being watched through the security camera, she has to keep dancing.
* In ''Film/BallsOfFury'', Randy Daytona is given a courtesan of pleasure with which to spend the night, but all they do is play Boggle. Of course, the main reason why he restrains himself is that the 'courtesan' is Creator/DiedrichBader.
* The 1995 film version of ''Film/HarrisonBergeron'' plays with this in the "Head House". People don't go there for sex, but for extremely suspicious things like [[ItMakesSenseInContext playing chess and having intellectual conversations]].
* Sort of happens in ''Film/EyesWideShut''. Bill ''wants'' to sleep with the prostitute, but his wife calls him and he has to leave. He pays the hooker anyway.
* In ''Film/DirtyWork'', Mitch gets back at a {{jerkass}} owner of a used car lot by hiring a bunch of prostitutes to get in the trunk of his cars and pretend to be dead during the broadcast of a live television commercial. Later in the film Mitch hires the same prostitutes to act as security while getting revenge on the BigBad.
* A major theme in Steven Soderbergh film ''Film/TheGirlfriendExperience''. Porn star Sasha Grey plays a high-class prostitute who specializes in the eponymous "girlfriend experience," which entails doing all sorts of platonic activities with her clients in addition to having sex. Some of her clients don't even want sex. For example, her last client in the film is an Orthodox Jew who pays her to simply hold him.
* In ''Film/TheKillingOfJohnLennon'', Chapman hires a prostitute for company on the night before he pulls off his plan, in an attempt to recreate a scene from ''Literature/TheCatcherInTheRye''.
* In ''Film/DasepoSonyo'', Poor Girl's attempts to sell herself usually result in this. His first client is more interested in having someone to play videogames with, while Big Razor Sis only wants someone with whom she can be herself.
* In ''Film/TheBestOfTimes'', Robin Williams hires a prostitute, to talk about the big game he blew in high school. She cuts him off when his credit card maxes out. (It wasn't the first time.)

* While she's not a prostitute, in ''Film/BlackKnight2001'', Jamal asks for Victoria to be brought into his chambers, so he could talk to her about him not wanting to kill the king (Victoria being a member of LaResistance), since the king did allow him to sleep with any woman in the palace. She initially assumes he just wants sex and shows up wearing nothing but a bedsheet. He explains he just wants to talk, but he knows the guards outside the door will be listening, so he has her make the [[TheImmodestOrgasm appropriate sounds]] in-between whispers.
* The titular ''Film/DeuceBigalow'' was prostituted by a pimp to pay for a very expensive aquarium he broke in the first film, and to help lure out a serial killer that was killing male prostitutes in the second film. He does not have sex with the women who hire him, instead he talks with them and offers emotional support and helps them solve their problems. The only time he has sex with anyone is with his love interest at the end of each film.
* ''Film/{{Horrific}}'': In ''Terror Vision'', Dr. Jordan hires a male prostitute to be the subject of his perception experiment. However, he soon becomes a DisposableSexWorker.
* ''Film/TheABCsOfDeath'': In the "P" segment, the john hires the main character to [[spoiler:crush a kitten beneath her high heel shoes while he films it]]. None of the other hookers he approaches will touch the job.
* In ''Film/HenryAndVerlin'', Henry goes to the prostitute Mabel for foot massages.
* ''{{Film/Chloe}}'': Initially, Catherine pays Chloe just to meet her husband at a cafe and see if he flirts with her. Later subverted, [[spoiler:however it turns out Chloe's lying about having sex with him]].
* In ''Film/{{Deadpool}}'', Wade initially hires Vanessa to "put balls in holes," aka play Skee-Ball at an arcade. At the end of the night, he cashes in his tickets for a Anime/{{Voltron}} ring that he then trades to Vanessa for another few minutes... wherein they do have sex.
* ''Film/LeoTheLast'': When Salambo becomes a prostitute, Leo pays to have sex with her, then begs her to let him help her. He buys her from her family and moves her into his mansion so she can save herself for her boyfriend Roscoe, who is currently in jail. Salambo is very confused and wonders when they're going to have sex.
* ''Film/MyHeartCantBeatUnlessYouTellItTo'': Dwight has sex with Pam, but he primarily seems to be paying her so that he’ll have someone to talk to outside his family. [[spoiler: That sharpens the sting when Jessie kills Pam to feed Thomas and even snaps out her gold tooth.]]
* ''Film/TheMenu'': [[spoiler:Margot/Erin]] turns out to be a HighClassCallGirl whom [[spoiler:Tyler]] hired so that he could keep his reservation at Hawthorne after his girlfriend broke up with him -- even though [[spoiler:he knew that the visit would end with the deaths of everyone involved. She's rightfully pissed about this.]]