Twenty-one years ago today, on January 2nd, 2000, I started escorting full-time; now today I’m officially semi-retiring. I had originally hoped this day would come much sooner, but life happened and financial disasters befell me, and it wasn’t until two years ago that I realized the time had finally come to scale back my professional life. When I first went full-time I had already been doing various kinds of sex work (compensated dating, sugaring, stripping, etc) on and off for fifteen years, and after today I’ll still be seeing my regular clients (and other gents who have seen me at least once before) and a very few who come recommended by friends. Even during the past 21 years I’ve done several different kinds of work (agency escorting, bachelor parties, running my own agency, independent escorting, and even a long-term exclusive gig). So, this isn’t a simple, linear matter of retirement as it is in straight jobs, and yet it does feel like an ending. I’m no longer using traditional advertising, no longer allowing myself to be solicited via text message by marginally-literate cretins, no longer screening so as to avoid said cretins (not to mention violent costumed rapists), and no longer seeing anyone without planning days or weeks in advance. This doesn’t mean I’m cutting back on activism just yet; I plan to keep writing regularly for a while, and doing public appearances when those become a thing again, and in fact I may possibly have more time and energy for such activities now. But even in that department, things have changed; when I first became an activist there weren’t all that many of us in the US, and now I’m glad to say there are thousands. So all in all, I feel like it’s time to put away my dancing shoes, and settle into my role as an “elder stateswoman” of the demimonde, leaving the field of action to my much younger sisters…including those who weren’t even born yet when I started.
Archive for the ‘Call types’ Category
Semi-retired
Posted in Biography, Call types, Perception, tagged activism, advertising, psychology, screening, sex work is work on January 2, 2021| 6 Comments »
Before It Gets Better
Posted in Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged activism, censorship, disease, holidays, hysteria, internet, politicians, porn, violence vs. sex workers on December 17, 2020| 6 Comments »
The times when those slain by the evil policies of the police state were simply left to rot in the shadows are over. – “The Body Count”
Every year on this day, sex workers around the world gather to mourn our dead, but this year, the observance will be different in two very important ways. You can probably guess the first: Most of the gatherings are likely to be virtual ones, as people choose to physically isolate themselves to ward off disease. The second, however, is far more important: in the two years since the passage of the massive anti-sex censorship law FOSTA, attention and support for sex worker rights has grown dramatically among the general public, the media, and even the parasitic hangers-on who proclaim themselves “leaders”. Increasingly-punitive laws engendered by “sex trafficking” hysteria and the general worldwide rise in authoritarianism, aggravated by pandemic-driven desperation, have produced the effect desired by prohibitionists: dramatically increased violence against sex workers. Most governments have added insult to injury by cutting those they know to be sex workers out of their pandemic relief programs, and even as the “sex trafficking” panic implodes those who have used it as an excuse for violence have redoubled their efforts. Nor has the shift to online forms of sex work (again, driven by the pandemic) allowed sex workers to escape this violence: sociopathic fanatics such as the creeps from Morality in Media and Exodus Cry, in collusion with sociopathic profiteers like Nicholas Kristof, have succeeded in cutting off revenue from the sex workers who sold their content on Pornhub, just as they did with Backpage, and it’s unlikely they will stop there. But sex workers are no longer dying in the shadows, unnoticed and unmourned; social media has given us a megaphone, and FOSTA has galvanized those of our community who never considered organizing before to do so in numbers far too large to ignore. Yes, there are still far too many (including the arch-prohibitionists who recently won the US presidential election) who want sex workers silent, invisible, and preferably caged, enslaved, or dead. And they still hold tremendous power, and have been handed terrifying weapons over the past decade by a gullible public quaking in fear of imaginary bogeymen. But they can no longer commit their atrocities in the dark as they once could. As I’ve said before, we’re in the part where it gets worse before it gets better. But now, many more people than ever before are watching, and increasing numbers of them do not at all like what they see.
The Home Stretch
Posted in Call types, Perception, tagged advertising, psychology, sex work is work on December 10, 2020| 4 Comments »
Three weeks from today, I’ll be officially semi-retiring. For those who somehow missed my previous announcements and reminders, what this means is that as of January 1st, I’m only going to see clients I’ve seen before. I won’t be taking new ones unless they come recommended by people I know personally, and I won’t be doing any short-notice gigs unless everything is exactly right. So for the most part I’ll only be seeing guys I’ve seen before, with enough notice to fit the dates into my existing schedule without having to turn handstands. No more answering calls from unknown numbers, no more answering cold texts, no more screening, no more feeling annoyed because someone wants a same-day appointment and I feel I have to accept because I don’t want to turn away a blessing. In other words, I’m eliminating all the parts of the job I dislike, the parts that stress me out and wear me down, and keeping all the stuff I like. I’ve often said that one of the funniest of prohibitionist idiocies is the idea that the worst part of whoring is the sex; that’s the easy part! The bad part is all the same crap one has to deal with in any other business, and I’ve never been especially good at business. So I’m shedding as much of the unpleasant stuff as I can, and keeping as much of the pleasant stuff as I can manage, and with Aphrodite’s help, it will all work out for the best.
Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night (Review)
Posted in Fiction, Perception, Philosophy, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged ethics, imaginative fiction, pragmatism, slavery on November 16, 2020| 8 Comments »
Though I’ve been a Trekkie since childhood, I had never seen all of Deep Space Nine until recently. The reason is simple: the series premiered in January 1993 and was midway through its third season when my first husband left me without warning. My life was thrown into turmoil and it took two years for me to get it straight again, during which time money was much too tight for the relative extravagance of cable TV. So though I saw all of the first two seasons, half of the third, and occasional episodes (at friends’ houses or via borrowed videocassettes) of the fourth and fifth seasons, I got rather lost due to the complex story arcs and decided not to see any more individual episodes until I could rewatch the whole show from the beginning. I gave Grace the complete series on DVD for Christmas about a decade ago, but still never got around to viewing it until this year, after I moved to Sunset as my primary residence. As I watched, I soon found that I agree with many reviewers’ opinion that the series is the best of all the Star Trek sequel series; though it was a direct spinoff of The Next Generation I find it very much superior to its parent, not only because of its greater consistency, better writing, and relief from the pressure of being THE Star Trek show of it decade, but also because it discarded the moral oversimplification which (unfortunately) permeates most of The Next Generation in favor of a universe full of greys in which few characters were either moral paragons or cardboard villains.
This realistic portrayal of the ethical tangle that is real life was on full display in a 6th-season episode we watched a couple of weeks ago, “Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night“. In it, Major Kira Nerys discovers that her mother, whom she believed to have died in a concentration camp during her planet’s half-century-long occupation by the militaristic Cardassians, actually survived for seven years after the very young Nerys had last seen her…as a “comfort woman” claimed by the Cardassian governor, Gul Dukat. At first, Kira (who started the series as a morally rigid, almost puritanical character, and only slowly grew to accept that real life rarely resembles such abstractions) refuses to believe that her sainted mother could have been guilty of collaboration horizontale, then as she explores the truth (with the help of a mysterious alien device which grants her visions of the past), she instead becomes terribly angry with her mother for literally sleeping with the enemy. But as the vision goes on, she realizes that her mother’s position as the governor’s mistress not only resulted in better living conditions for herself, but also for her husband and children, who might otherwise have died in a labor camp. By the end of the episode she has not forgiven her mother, but has come to accept that she did what she thought best for her family, just as Nerys herself had to make hard choices (including becoming a terrorist) in her own struggle to survive the occupation.
The episode is not a highly rated one; perhaps the topic is too uncomfortable for many viewers, especially in these neo-Victorian times. But as a sex worker and hard-nosed pragmatist, I deeply appreciated the show’s willingness to recognize that sex work, even under duress, can almost never be fit into a pat narrative of villain and victim, and its repeated depiction (in this episode and many others) of war as a filthy business from which nobody emerges entirely clean.
Another Kind of Haggling
Posted in Call types, Perception, tagged bad customers, ethics, psychology, screening on September 17, 2020| 2 Comments »
Haggling isn’t actually about the relative expense of a sex worker’s price; it’s a means of trying to circumvent her boundaries. As I explained nine years ago in “Head Games“,
…[most] men who haggle can easily afford the girl’s price, they simply want to get her to back down from it in order to feel as though they’ve won a victory over her…men who have reviewed expensive escorts will still haggle with girls who charge half as much; this demonstrates that it’s not about the money but rather about getting the girl to accept a compromise. More subtle types will accept an escort’s price, but will try to get her to compromise one of her other rules in some way; for example, if a girl has published hours they’ll try to get an appointment just before or just after those hours, or if she refuses same-day appointments they’ll try to get one. A girl who only accepts certain forms of communication will be pushed for another form (for example, her personal phone number)…
Since the demise of the quickie ad sites in the last two years, we’ve seen another type of haggler become more common: the guy who tries to avoid screening. This kind of sleazebag is hardly new; every sex worker has dealt with men who seem to think their nervousness is more important than her safety. These self-important schmucks love to pretend that outing clients is a real concern, despite the fact that…
Every whore understands that it’s wrong to out clients; “about 20% of men see sex workers occasionally…yet we don’t see anything like 20% of men exposed as clients. The fact that ignorant people believe the nonsensical claim that fewer than 15% of men have ever paid for sex tends to point toward the lifetime exposure rate as being even lower than that…” And it isn’t only a matter of ethics; a whore who got caught outing clients would be destroying her own brand for good, so there are good practical as well as moral reasons for keeping our mouths shut about the famous men who end up between our legs…
Sometimes a request for screening information will provoke a torrent of abuse, clearly demonstrating why being alone with such a man would be a spectacularly bad idea. But on other occasions, the wannabe client will try to convince the sex worker to eschew screening by insisting he’s a “nice guy”; appealing to her avarice by waving fantasy sums of money and/or promises of an “ongoing relationship” should she relent (a promise worth precisely as much as it cost him to make); or proposing she spend all the prep, travel, and social time to meet him in person to “see if we’re a good fit” (conveniently providing him with social time while demonstrating next to nothing about how he’ll behave in private). I had one of these clods attempt all three with me in a five-text conversation last week; given that his last text was a flurry of insults, pomposity, and accusations of dishonesty and impersonation (“my guess is you’re…posing as an escort“), he unwittingly demonstrated, as such men generally do, that my decision not to see him was a wise one.
Five Months Left
Posted in Call types, Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged advertising, escort review sites, internet, sex work is work on July 27, 2020| 3 Comments »
It’s now been a year since I largely abandoned traditional escort advertising sites such as Eros; I still have a few free ads (such as on Tryst), but as I explained in “In the Club“, most of my new clients over the past two years have come from “people who approach me via my blog, Twitter, other writing, my public speaking, TV interviews, etc.” That column also explained that by the end of this year, I plan to semi-retire, seeing only people I’ve already seen before (and the occasional new client who comes directly recommended by a sex worker I know personally). By the beginning of this year I’d seen very little change in my income despite five months without regular ads, and though like most sex workers I’ve been hit pretty hard in the bank account by the events of this year, that has only demonstrated to me more clearly that I can survive without a constant flow of new clients. So I think it’s time to remind y’all that as of January 1st, it’s going to get harder to see me if you haven’t seen me before; I even plan to remove my business phone number from ads. Regulars won’t see any difference, nor will anyone who has seen me professionally at least once by the end of this year, so if you’re not yet in that exclusive club, but would like to be, you should contact me pretty soon to get screened and arrange a visit. I understand that some of you may be interested, but aren’t traveling or seeing anyone right now; that’s perfectly fine as long as you’re screened and paid by New Year’s Eve, even if we have to delay our actual meeting (and I do phone call as well, if that helps). It’s likely I’ll do one more reminder around the beginning of December, but don’t wait until then; even one session now will protect your ability to book an appointment with me until I finally put away my lingerie for good at some point down the road.
Talkers
Posted in Call types, Perception, Q & A, tagged agency denial, courtesans, fantasy, psychology, sacred prostitutes on April 16, 2020| 3 Comments »
Are “talkers” still a type of customer? It seems like sex workers perform a lot of therapy as part of their job; there’s a lot of sexual stuff I would never talk about to any therapist, and I’m sure there are plenty like me out there.
Oh, sure. Contrary to the twisted, ugly sexual fantasies of prohibitionists, most clients aren’t interested in the human equivalent of a sex doll; as I wrote in “The Pygmalion Fallacy“,
Prohibitionists…are fond of characterizing men’s interaction with whores as “use”; they constantly speak of hookers “selling their bodies” or clients “objectifying” us. But as every one of my readers who has ever participated on either side of the equation knows, this is pure bunk; the vast majority of men who hire prostitutes aren’t just looking for warm holes, but rather interaction with real women…
If the fantasies of prohibitionists and “sex robot” fetishists were based in reality, one would expect the demand for passive, inarticulate whores to be much higher than the demand for those with strong minds, strong wills and strong communication skills. But if anything, the opposite tends to be true: in general, the more an escort charges, the less sex she has and the more talking she does. Most guys won’t pay high-range prices for a companion who can’t carry on a conversation, and this has been true throughout history (as demonstrated by the number of famous courtesans who were also accomplished poets, writers, artists, and even philosophers).
This is only half of the equation, however. As you pointed out, many people don’t feel comfortable discussing intimate (and possibly embarrassing) details of their sexualities with academic types; it’s why surveys about sexual topics are so notoriously unreliable, and the results of such polls are a better indicator of what the respondents think the researchers want to hear than what they actually think, feel and do. Add to that the existence of “mandated reporting” laws which demand that pschiatric professionals snitch to the cops about the feelings some of their patients divulge under the mistaken belief that their confidences will be kept confidential, and I think you can understand why many men prefer to discuss their private sexual feelings with members of a profession who have been comforting men and keeping their secrets since the dawn of human civilization.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
The Enablers
Posted in The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged California, cops, Enablers, internet, License To Rape, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, rape, Texas, To Molest and Rape, violence vs. sex workers on March 6, 2020| 1 Comment »
Have you noticed that it’s getting much more common for police departments and/or bootlicking journalists to hide the images of rapist cops? Because I sure have. Oh, it has happened at least occasionally since police departments have enabled rapists (in other words, for as long as they’ve existed), but in the past year it has become increasingly difficult to find pictures of rapist cops online until after they’re convicted, and sometimes even then. I first noticed the increase in the problem when out-of-control Columbus, Ohio, vice pig Andrew Mitchell, a serial rapist of sex workers, murdered Donna Dalton when she struggled against his attempt to rape her in August, 2018; the vice gang chose to describe the crimes as an “unauthorized prostitution investigation” and hid Mitchell’s picture until he was finally charged less than a year ago. The only reason we had a picture earlier was that Donna’s family got ahold of pics and distributed them on social media. Since then, I’ve seen a number of cases: Ian G Lucas of Prince George’s County, Maryland; Richard Edward Sotelo of Imperial County, California; David Kwiecien of El Paso; Neil Halttunen of Springfield, Oregon; ICE thug Wilfredo Rodriguez; and TSA goon Johnathon Lomeli, among others, have all had their pictures suppressed by “authorities” so that women who might encounter these dangerous predators will not be able to recognize them. I’ve been using the pictures of their bosses (police chiefs, sheriffs, etc) in place of rapists’ pictures when unavailable, but what I’d really like is a way to pull these guys’ pics out of police websites or databases so I can share them when the simpering media won’t. I know that I have a lot of readers who are hackers, IT guys and others who are cleverer than I am when it comes to this kind of stuff; if any of y’all has an idea of how to find rapist cops’ pictures when Google can’t (legally, of course), I’d be very grateful if you’d share it.