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Archive for the ‘Q & A’ Category

No Fun

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , on January 24, 2019| 3 Comments »

I recently had an appointment with a male escort, and when I arrived and asked the room number he said he had decided to host a friend in his room and asked me to wait for 2 hours past my appointment time.  Naturally I didn’t want to wait, and pressed the issue; he agreed to see me on time and the session was fine.  However, he asked me to leave early and brought up the possibility of a partial refund.  I didn’t take him up on it at the time, but a few days later decided to ask for it; he was surly and complained that the title for the payment I used on my payment app (“Fun”) got his account flagged.  The whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth, so how do I write a frank, honest review that encapsulates my feelings about this without royally screwing him? I feel like I couldn’t really justify more than 3/5 stars on the rating site; how much detail should I give so future buyers can beware?

It seems to me that your escort behaved in an extremely unprofessional manner.  While emergencies can arise on either side of the transaction, “I decided to have a friend over” is not an emergency.  Moreover, given the situation, the proper solution is for the escort to say to the friend, “Hey, I need to work for two hours; here’s $50 so you can get dinner in the restaurant and I promise I’ll make it up to you,” not “Hey client, would you please loiter in a hotel lobby or parking lot for two hours so the staff will get suspicious and call the cops, and we can both be busted.”  And having decided to do the session, asking you to leave early was shitty.

Your offenses weren’t nearly as bad as his (and not only because he is supposed to be the pro, not you), but they’re not trivial, either.  Since you didn’t accept his offer of a partial refund right away, asking for it later was kind of graceless.  And putting “fun” or any other such word in the memo for a payment could potentially cause him to lose that account entirely, not to mention possibly being put on some kind of list (I don’t know such a list exists, but in the current police-state climate I wouldn’t be surprised).  Since you were not entirely without fault yourself, I wouldn’t write any review at all if I were you.  I definitely think his offenses were worse, but what purpose would such a review serve?  Frankly, “so future buyers can beware” strikes me as disingenuous; it seems more to me like you want to get back at him.  I’m not saying I don’t think your annoyance is justified, but I see this as feeding into drama when you could nip it in the bud.  Of course you shouldn’t see him again, and if another review board member directly asks you what the encounter was like you shouldn’t lie.  But if his behavior is often that unprofessional, others will write bad reviews without your help; I think you will be better off just shaking the dust of his room from your sandals and considering it a lesson learned.

(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.)

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Nothing To Do With It

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , on January 17, 2019| 1 Comment »

Have you ever come across any asexual escorts?  I’m asexual but sex positive and interested in getting into the business.  I feel like personally I’d have it easier than some because while I have great empathy with people, and enjoy socializing, I have no sexual or romantic attraction to make things messy.

As long as you’re good at faking sexual response and you aren’t actually repulsed by sex, being asexual is not in itself a barrier to being a sex worker.  No professional finds the majority of her clients attractive, and we all have some clients who are if anything the opposite of attractive.  Furthermore, I know more than a few escorts who are lesbians, yet still do quite well.  The reason is simple:  though many men seem unable to understand it or may even deny it, the fact is that an escort’s service for her client is a performance, not a “mutual” sexual experience such as amateurs claim to prefer (mostly because they can’t separate Hollywood fantasy from practical reality).  The truth is, a woman who is having sex to fulfill her own needs cannot possibly devote as much energy and attention to her partner as a skilled and perceptive sex worker can, precisely because she is paying attention at least in part to her own needs rather than devoting 100% of her attention to the task at hand.  It’s the same reason 69 is a really crappy position even though many amateurs are fascinated by it, and the same reason professionals are so frustrated by clients who insist that “I want to please yoooooooouuuu!” (which is generally code for “I want to go down on you”, because a lot of guys have been brainwashed into thinking that every woman just adores cunnilingus, and have convinced themselves that they’re experts at performing it).  At the end of the day, a sex worker’s personal interest in or desire for sex is of little importance; what matters is her ability to divine and respond to her client’s needs, to give him a good time, and to make him feel accepted and appreciated.

(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.)

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The Limits of Patience

Posted in Miscellaneous, Q & A, tagged , , on December 13, 2018| 9 Comments »

Every so often, I’m forced to narrow my contact parameters a little bit more.  First I started turning down requests for me to do unpaid guest posts, then requests for written interviews.  More recently, I asked readers with questions to put them in a more concise form so it doesn’t take quite so much effort to read and answer them.  And now I’m afraid I need to add another one, about interviews this time:  if you want one, you’re going to need to conduct it in a way that doesn’t stress me out and require me to decode the bizarre “logic” of software engineers.  If you want to talk to me on the phone, that’s completely fine.  If you want to get together in person for an old-fashioned pad-and-pencil interview, or to record me for a podcast (either audio-only or with video) on your own equipment, we can do that.  And there are even a couple of online interview tools (Zoom and Google Hangouts) that generally work OK, though I’ve had problems with both of those (especially Hangouts) when the person who wants to interview me tries some kind of fancy thing.  If you want to use one of those, you need to assume all responsibility for technical details because I’m a whore, not a programmer; don’t think if something goes wrong I’m going to be able to figure it out on my end, because it’s very unlikely that I will, and the attempt will frustrate me and possibly even make me cry.  Skype?  Won’t work on my Chromebook.  I’m reasonably sure Facetime won’t either, because Apple, and I’m not going to try so don’t ask.  Nor will I respond well to requests that I “just download the whateveritis software” or “watch this YouTube video, it explains how to do it”.  Nope.  If you want to interview me, you need to handle the technical details of anything more complicated than “click here”, “please look into the camera” or “answer the phone”.  In short, the only part I want to have to deal with is “show up and be fabulous”, because that I’m good at.  And crying makes my makeup run.

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Work-related

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , on November 29, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Do you know if any sex workers that work in legal Nevada brothels have ever gotten disability for sex work related injury?  Especially a repetitive-use injury like carpal tunnel or TMJ?

While there are definitely use injuries related to sex work, I sincerely doubt anyone has ever successfully filed a claim for such an injury for the simple reason that brothel workers, like strippers, are not employees but rather independent contractors.  They get no benefits whatsoever; on the contrary, they pay a percentage to the house (much like beauticians pay a percentage to the salon where they work).  And though a disability-rights lawyer might have more information, I strongly suspect trying to claim federal disability based on a sex-related injury of any kind (much less a sex work-related injury) would be much more likely to result in persecution than it would be to result in any economic benefits.

(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.)

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Yet Here We Are

Posted in Philosophy, Q & A, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , on November 15, 2018| 2 Comments »

I’m a sex worker in love with a wonderful, kind, but very weak man who, after years and several children with an abusive, mentally ill wife is financially fucked and legally cornered by a Kafkaesque divorce court system.  Jail might be in his future, if not suicide, and in the meantime court-ordered child support and other payments have left him literally unable to afford rent so he’s now homeless.  I feel like I will have to decide to leave him because he can’t emotionally or financially survive the abuse by his ex and the court, and I can’t be in relationship with a broken person who feels entitled to a reality that will not come.  Any advice would be appreciated. 

Since he has allowed this to go on for far too long, whatever chance he might have had at the beginning has long since gone down the toilet; the only way he’s going to carve out even the most basic protection is to hire a top-notch divorce lawyer who will fight his ex’s no-holds-barred assaults with even more ruthless assaults.  What could such a lawyer win for him?  I have no idea, but at this point, he will be doing well to be left with some money to live on and protection from further spurious accusations.  Of course, if he doesn’t even have enough money to pay rent, he can’t afford a lawyer.  And that means you need to decide – I’m sorry, but there’s no nice way to say this – if this relationship is worth your emotional and financial investment.  I believe you when you say that he’s a wonderful man, and that you love him.  But I also agree with you that he’s weak, and has not fought this to win but to “roll over”.  From what you describe in your very detailed letter, he made a long succession of mistakes in every single interaction with his ex from the very beginning, starting with his decision to fuck her in the first place.  Does that mean he “deserves” what has happened to him?  Absolutely fucking not.  And yet, here we are.  And you need to make decisions based in current reality, not romantic fantasies or might-have-beens or “if I won the lottery”.  If you stay with this man you will be supporting him until his youngest child is out of university, and maybe even longer than that.  Any legal fees will need to come from you.  His housing and support will come from you.  Whatever malicious fees the court levies on him?  You.  And he’ll expect you to provide all the usual emotional and practical labor as well, because beside being a man he’s too devastated to provide emotional support even to himself, much less you.  I hear that you love him and he’s wonderful, but is whatever he gives you enough to justify that cost?  He is already draining you like a vampire, emotionally, financially, sexually and even physically, and that will not stop unless you stop it.

I’m sorry, honey, I know this is incredibly painful, and I wish I had some good news or happy thoughts for you.  The legal system of this country is designed to grind people into pulp, and your boyfriend obediently jumped into that machine on the orders of a dangerously unhinged woman.  So now the only thing left for you to decide is whether to risk getting sucked in yourself by reaching into the gears on the probably-vain hope of pulling him out; to just stand there and be splattered by blood and gore as the machine does its horrifying work; or to wash your hands of the whole thing.

(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.)

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Not Your Costume?

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , on November 8, 2018| 3 Comments »

In the past few weeks I’ve seen a number of Facebook posts urging people not to wear offensive Halloween costumes, which got me thinking:  Are you offended when “amateurs” wear “hooker” costumes?

I think the problem with the whole “offensive costume” thing is that, like nearly everything nowadays, it’s so incredibly overblown.  I totally understand why people from marginalized groups (including, but not limited to, black people, Amerinds and sex workers) are annoyed and offended when people from majority social groups who have never done anything to help them (and indeed support political policies that hurt them) use caricatures of their identities as costumes; it feels patronizing and kind of dehumanizing.  However, I draw the line at telling anybody else what to do, and I would actively fight any kind of institutional rules telling people what they can and can’t wear.  If some clueless amateur couple wants to dress up as “pimp and ho” caricatures I will mock them, tell them they’re classless imbeciles, and probably even mute them on social media; however, I would not support some puritanical bean-counter telling them that they were not allowed to make asses of themselves thus.  I’m of the “more speech” school; in other words, I think the most effective way of shutting down offensive anti-sex BS is to lob it back harder, as I do when I mock the “dirty whore” myth by featuring articles about sky-high STI rates among amateurs and declaring that they’re a public health menace who should be licensed and regulated.  So if I felt really strongly about some nitwit wearing a “whore” costume, I’d respond by creating an even more over-the-top and offensive “amateur” costume.

The worst excess of the “offensive costume” controversy, though, is people telling little kids that they’re not allowed to dress up as heroes of different races for Halloween.  If a little white girl wants to dress up as Moana, or a little Asian boy as Black Panther, or a little black boy as Batman, no adult has the fucking right to say anything about it…and frankly, I think it’s arse-backward anyway.  If a little kid’s greatest hero is someone of a different race, I consider that a good thing, not something to discourage; it brings us one baby step closer to the day when we start judging people by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skins or the sounds of their surnames.  And if a teenage girl wants to dress up as a famous whore like Calamity Jane or a fictional one like Inara from Firefly, not out of mockery but out of admiration, I have absolutely no problem with that.

(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.)

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Because It Is

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , on October 25, 2018| 3 Comments »

Why, in discussions about monogamy, do you use the words “harm reduction” or “pressure valve” to characterize the act of seeing a sex worker within an outwardly-monogamous marriage or partnership?

Every person has the right to control their own sexuality and no one else’s.  What this means in a monogamous marriage is that if a partner (nearly always the wife) loses sexual interest, she has the right to refuse sex; she does not, however, have the right to stop her husband from procuring what he needs elsewhere.  But while this is ethically true, most marriage laws take a dim view of so-called “infidelity” even if the only alternative is celibacy.  And even in jurisdictions where the court isn’t supposed to consider “fault”, in fact many judges do, and a husband who is caught “stepping out” is likely to get an even shorter end of the stick than he otherwise would.  Furthermore, marriage is primarily an economic and social arrangement, despite the popular lie that it’s about love and romance; even a sexless marriage may have many benefits, and the husband may wish to remain with his family rather than weather the pain and upheaval of divorce.  So if he’s going to get his sex elsewhere, it’s better for all parties if he does so discreetly, from a qualified professional practicing safe sex who has no interest in him romantically and is highly motivated to keep his secrets, rather than from an unpredictable amateur with questionable hygiene who may get pregnant, become emotionally entangled with him, start making extracontractual demands and otherwise making a mess out of what should’ve been a simple business transaction.  In simpler terms, I call sex work a harm reduction method for monogamy because it is.

(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.)

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Moneygamy

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , , , on October 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »

I’m a 24-year-old gay male sex worker who recently got into a relationship.  My partner knows about and respects my work, but he wants to be monogamous and feels like we have to be in an open relationship because of my job.  I don’t mind being monogamous, but I enjoy my job and I don’t want to quit, but I truly want to be with this man because he is the most wonderful person I’ve ever met and has an emotional depth and maturity that is truly unparalleled.  I was wondering if you had any advice or personal experience/wisdom you could impart.

Whether or not you can make this work will depend largely if not entirely on whether your partner can understand that sex work is work rather than a recreational activity.  Notice I didn’t say “if you can make him see that…” or something similar, because although you can express the truth to him, you cannot make him accept it.  All you can do is to tell him that if he wants to be monogamous, you are happy to promise him that you won’t have any sexual contact with anyone else unless money is involved; after that, the rest is up to him.  You might also take a look at a couple of other columns I’ve written on similar topics; though they’re about hetero relationships, I honestly don’t think the dynamic would be all that different.  And if you find them helpful, you’re more than welcome to share them with him.  The most helpful column of all might be this two-part interview with my (now ex-) husband; even though we are no longer together, our separation was very amicable and had little to do with my work, and we are still good friends.  His insights on jealousy and looking at my work as an outsider might help to give your partner insight from another man who’s been there, and that might do more to help him than I as a female sex worker could ever manage.

(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.)

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Distinctive

Posted in Perception, Q & A, tagged , on October 4, 2018| 1 Comment »

I’m very interested in sex work, but I have a rare (not contagious) skin condition.  In day to day life it can’t be seen under clothing, but when I’m nude it’s impossible to hide.  Because of this I don’t think I could successfully advertise my services without compromising my identity, and I’m concerned that there are some men who might be put off by the appearance if I dress to hide it in pictures.  Do you have any suggestions on finding men who would consider my marks an asset to my beauty, without compromising my privacy or boundaries?  I’ve also considered exploring long term arrangements where I would exchange both my emotional intimacy and sex for money and material items (I’m not too sure if there is a specific name for that).  Have you known any SW who leveraged unusual physical characteristics and were able to thrive in their careers?

One thing we learn in the sex industry is that anything which sets one woman apart from others will have its fans.  For example, my friend Buttons Berry is a little person, about four feet tall, and she supports herself quite well via escorting.  But though men are accepting of a wide variety of characteristics, they definitely want to see what they’re getting (and can get angry if they feel as though they’ve been “fooled”), so hiding your skin condition in photos might be a bad idea, and showing it could compromise your identity, since the condition is rare.  How would you feel about trying sugar dating on for size first?  That’s the name for the kind of compensated dating you’re talking about, and though it’s not as lucrative as escorting it’s “softer” in the sense that there is far less social stigma in being a sugar baby than an escort, and it’s not illegal.  You could make your public pictures clothes-on and mention your skin in the write-up, with pictures revealing more on a private page that men need your permission to get to (most sugar sites are set up that way).  That way you could get used to the work and see how men react, without spreading nudes all over the internet and potentially torpedoing your future “straight” career plans.  Plus, as I wrote a few weeks ago, this is a very uncertain time to be entering escorting, so I feel uncomfortable suggesting any new ladies enter that particular type of sex work right now.

(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.)

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Notification

Posted in Miscellaneous, Q & A, tagged , , , on September 20, 2018| Leave a Comment »

There’s one question I get far more commonly than any other; I am asked this same question (with slight variations) a minimum of several times a week.  Sometimes it comes by email, sometimes phone, sometimes text, sometimes Twitter and sometimes in person.  That question is, “Can you let me know when [you do whatever thing it is the enquirer is interested in]?” and the answer is always “no”.  The questioner most often wants to know when I’ll be visiting his city, or when I’ll be releasing a new book, or something like that, but I’ve seen some unusual variations.  Obviously, these people just aren’t thinking things through; apparently they’ve gotten used to automated notifications on their computers or phones which remind them of everything from doctor’s appointments to their kids’ birthdays to when to take a crap, and they don’t stop to consider that I probably don’t have access to such software.  I don’t honestly believe it’s the same syndrome that drives the “Debate me!” narcissists, because the notice-seekers are usually friendly rather than demanding and often want to be reminded so they can spend money on me, unlike the time-wasters.  Be that as it may, the logistics are still impossible; there’s only one of me and thousands of fans, and since I can barely remember things I need to do personally without Google calendar and automated billing, the chances of my remembering to remind other people who (no offense, y’all) are not members of my immediate social circle are essentially nil.  Fortunately, I don’t need to; I announce trips and such in my weekly diary columns (which usually appear on Tuesday, and occasionally on Monday or Thursday) and Twitter, so if you follow either this blog or my Twitter feed you’ll have all the notification you need…unless I forget to post it there, of course, but if that starts happening it’ll be indicative of a much more serious problem.

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