Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Prompted by a reader comment yesterday, here is a snippet from a type of email I get occasionally…

Why don’t you write about what you really think about your work/clients?…Your fears and dark moods? You’re always so artificially upbeat and perky, you’re not a spooky mistress, you’re like a cheerleader!

Spooky? I think this particular person has confused BDSM with Goth. No, I am not spooky. I am kinky.

And I am always mildly surprised when random people tell me that I should be writing this blog to suit their specifications. (Especially when you consider that hey folks, you ain’t paying me for this. If you want to hire me to write something, you just speak right up and we’ll talk about that.)

I don’t write about my sex-worker angst because I don’t have any. Bear in mind, I’ve been in the industry since I was nineteen. I’ve worked through a lot of the beginner issues and I’m in a really good place with my career now. Sure, I get stressed and cranky sometimes. That power outage last month? I had to cancel appointments, I lost money, and I was so cranky about that. I was the newly-elected Mayor Of Crankyville during those few days. Believe me.

But huge, sweeping bouts of work-related emotional trauma that encompass my whole being? Nah. Doesn’t happen. I’m a boringly even-keeled kinda girl. I hear that I’m messing with your ideas of what a sex worker thinks and feels, but – deal.

And – as I say this for perhaps the ten thousandth time – questions like this presuppose that I have an adversarial relationship with my clients. That's way off base. I’ve met a few genuine assholes in the course of my career – although not as many as you’d think. Most guys I’ve met had good intentions. Sometimes they just need to be schooled a bit in the fine points.

Far more than assholes, I’ve met guys who didn’t mean any harm, exactly, but who had a lot of intense issues about their own sexuality. I can help with that in some cases, but some guys bring so much negative energy to the session that I simply can’t deal with them. It’s too bad, but the amount of work it takes to stay centered and keep good boundaries with someone like that – it’s exhausting. I’d rather spend the time with someone with whom I can relax.

So I’ve phased out all the guys that I didn’t like playing with, and I’ve learned how to pick new clients that I will like. And I have worked my way to a place where I do get to pick and choose. I hardly see anyone new anymore, it’s almost all guys I know. They treat me extremely well, and I try to treat them just as well in return. To include: protecting their privacy. I take that very seriously.

True, some guys tell me, “You can write about me, I’m okay with that.” But there are still problems with that, as I talked about here. I don’t want my guys to feel jealous and competitive, so I don’t write much about clients at all.

Sex work is not something I do in order to have something interesting to write about. This is my career. I have a lot of clients say to me, “Please don’t quit or move anywhere, don’t retire.” I find that very sweet – and I’m not going anywhere. This is what I do, I like it, and I’ll be doing it until I’m quite old and the phone doesn’t ring anymore. And after that happens, then I will write a book all about how I did it, and there will be some stories there that I haven’t told before.

But that’s a long way away. And you’ll have to buy the book!

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