Getting Crushed, Part 3

The first time I retired was far from the end. I was sort of like an alcoholic who keeps trying different tricks to drink like a normal person – just beer, only on weekends, only with dinner, etc. There were many more missteps and stumbles. I tried having sugar daddy relationships with one guy at a time. I decided I could work in a sex club. I just plain got desperate and went back to the easiest way I knew to make money.

The real end came much later. But once I had really quit, I shoved the whole experience into a corner of my brain I never intended to revisit. I went years without thinking about what I’d done. I assumed I would always keep the secret of my hooker past from everyone I met.

But because of this blog, that hasn’t turned out to be true. Telling these stories was the only way to feel better about their contents, and having them heard was the key to learning from my mistakes. In that way, writing this blog changed my life.

But now that I’ve been writing here for over a year, I’m not sure how much more I have to say about sex work. I’m not out of tales of bad sex with unbelievably oblivious johns, and I’m definitely not out of stories about stupid decisions I’ve made in the name of sex. But I don’t have anything new to say about those topics, and even if I did I’m better poised to make a living on my stories than I was a year ago. I write full time now – which means I have less time to write for myself.

I’m not sure what I want to become of this blog – I lie up nights worrying about it sometimes. I’m not ready to close it down entirely, but I’m tired of talking about whoring -- at some point reliving these stories becomes less about healing and more about playing with fire, dipping my toe into the quicksand. I’m not sure if my life is interesting enough these days to write about; it’s a tribute to how much writing this blog has helped me that I’m mostly sane and boring today.

There is one story I want to tell. Someone asked me through e-mail the other day what happened to R., the client I was crushing on here and here. The answer is one of the good things that came out of my time as a callgirl.

The first time I quit the biz, I didn’t bother sending out a press release. I was done, so done, that I stopped cold-turkey without notifying any of my former clients. I just quit checking my email and answering my cell phone, and before long they quite writing and calling. But when I got an e-mail from R. asking if I had retired, I wrote back.

"I have retired. I just got increasingly more disgusted with myself. I knew I was too smart for what I was doing. I got scared I was going to end up with some kind of horrible disease or that someone in my life would find out what I was doing. Hell, it'll probably still come out someday when I least expect it and when it will do the most damage.

I liked it at first-- it seemed easy and fun and I was a broke-ass arty chick in NYC driven to desperate measures. But I really started to hate myself, my body, sex, men, money. I'm not talking about you really--maybe I'm naive, but I honestly believe you saw me as a person and not just a piece of ass. You're for damn sure the only one I'm bothering to reply to.

I don't know where rent is coming from a few months from now, but I just couldn't do it anymore. Maybe I'll change my mind when I'm broke again but I hope not. I've always been a huge sex-work advocate as a woman and a feminist but now I believe there really isn't a way to sell your body and be healthy. There isn't a way to keep from getting broken.

I like you so much. I'd love to be friends."

And back from him:

“You know, it's damn cool you wrote me back. Thanks.

I thought you may have hung up your boots, and
honestly, even though (selfishly) this probably means
I won't make love to you again, I'm really glad you
have retired.

And I am also very glad nothing terrible happened to
you. Thought maybe you ended up in some Arabian
dungeon or or worse....

You really are too smart, too sweet, too super cool
and too sexy to share any part of yourself with
strangers looking for their next sex fix.

I agree with you, I don't think sex work can produce
anything positive in the long-term. It's so
fascinating and yet so destructive. But like you, I
support someone's decision to do it. The actual female
friends I have known who got into it - it really eats
them up and drains them. Even guys I know who work on
the editorial side of porno mags - they are so jaded
and burnt out.

And you're not naive - I do see you as a person. Even
though I know our meetings were technically business,
I saw it as two friends getting together. I instantly
liked you as a person, enjoyed talking to you and was
amazed how down to earth you were. I think we both saw
through the general absurdity of what we were doing
and just had fun. Our therapy sessions helped get my
mind off some really bad things in my life and made me
feel good about myself at a time I was feeling like
crap.

I guess that's why I made a lousy John, I really can't
be myself with strangers - I'm a shy movie geek with a
bad boy complex. But I think you understood that in
me.

So I haven't done it in a very long time (our sporadic
meetings excluded). Out of the three other times I
paid for it, I couldn't help feeling degraded,
pathetic, scared, desperate and like that little old
lady on the bad end of a good con job.

But I had this fire inside me to try it, a "Hey!
You're a guy" rite of passage thing. Then I said to
myself, "You're a writer, it'll be material if nothing
else." I guess I could justify it however I want, huh?

So, as expected, I have ranted my ass off. But as you
know, that's what I do. It was good to think about all
this stuff. As it's good to know you are safe and
doing alright.

Yes, I would love to be friends, 'cause I really like
you too. And I still have your Christmas gift here,
so, like meet me for coffee or DVD shopping sometime
so I can give it to you.”

We met at The Holiday Cocktail Lounge. It was weird to hang out with our clothes on, but I soon found out we had even more in common than I had realized during our eerily intimate bedroom sessions. Every time I looked at him, I caught him staring at me, and would have to lower my eyes under the intensity of his gaze. He went to the jukebox and put “Wicked Game” on repeat. The song I had never particularly liked before now sounded sweet, not cloying, as strains of the lyrics “I want to fall in love” floated through the bar.

So we did fall in love. Our relationship was instantly the most intense of my life. We already knew our sexual chemistry was insane, but even more than that, we were passionate in our obsessions, enthusiastic for minutiae and obsessive about the offbeat. We took road trips to trashy boardwalks and scoured the Salvation Army for old records. We got turned on in used book stores. When people asked how we had met, we said “I was a hooker and he was my john,” and people always laughed and no one ever believed us. And we fucked, god did we fuck, in every way, for hours, until we fell asleep on top of one another. He was the Johnny to my June and we made each other crazy.

Our relationship is long over. (Remember all that fucking up I still had to do? I did it all over him, eventually.) But I will always love him for never once treating me like I deserved any less than 100 percent of his respect, and for affording me dignity in an undignified situation. And for keeping my secrets before I told them.

More Bits and Pieces

Guess who's interviewed in L Magazine's Sex ish? A bunch of people, but also me!

I Was a Topless Bartender

... and I wrote about it on Radar.

Pop Hooker Roundup

Show about that OTHER callgirl premieres

EW's Tricks of the Trade highlights 25 Hollywood Hookers

The top 20 songs about hookers

More songs about hookers

In non-hooker news, stick a beer belly on this guy and I now believe in love at first sight. He is like, scorching me through the fucking page. Please, please call me.

I'm With the Band

I’ve never been the girl who is into musicians. Part of it is just laziness. I’d rather scoop up low-hanging fruits than wear myself out jumping for the really juicy stuff at the top. And I just plain can’t stand the sense of entitlement that guys develop when they’re used to getting a lot of sexual attention. I’m a chick. Getting laid is supposed to be easy.

Still, Aaron was in a band. The lead guitarist and I had met at a lame party where we’d poked fun at the other attendees all night. The next week he’d taken me to dinner and we’d had several hours of sex in which we both had several orgasms.

Sense of humor, free dinner, and he got me off? This guy was a triple threat. So I agreed when he invited me to his band’s show, even though there is no worse date than going to see a guy’s band play. Actually, I hate attending concerts alone in general; normally I can make friends anywhere but it’s hard to meet people who are there to see a band, and if the music is moving I get sort of weepy. Last time I went to a concert alone a group of guys started referring to me as “melons,” filling me with the familiar sense of anger pricked with an embarrassing sense of being flattered by the degrading come-on.

But I couldn’t find a suitable girlfriend (cute but not cuter than me) to accompany me and bringing a guy friend seemed fraught with innuendo, so I threw on a black sweater dress and patent red Mary Janes and his the venue alone in hopes that the sex would be worth it.

Walking into the venue, I saw him immediately. We hugged, exchanged pleasantries, and he ran backstage while I settled in at the bar with a Gray Goose and tonic. A few moments later, however, I noticed that he had re-emerged and was talking with a group of friends (his band?). Two feet away from me. I stood awkwardly, pretending not to notice that I didn’t warrant an invitation into the group.

The night continued in this vein. In the brief moments he came out from backstage, he would minister to me briefly, then to his friends without ever introducing us. First I was hurt, then I was embarrassed, then I got pissed. Dressed to the nines and teetering on my high heels, leaning against the bar with no one to talk to, I did what any sexually confident young woman would do – I got super drunk. And as I got super drunk, I started flirting with other guys. A lot of other guys.

First there was orange pants guy. I think I made fun of his orange pants. He bought me a shot. Next, a polo-shirted fellow leaned in during my date’s set and shouted “This is the worst band ever!” Something about him I liked, so we spent a few minutes flirting before I returned to bar for a cocktail I didn’t need. From there it was hard to even tell which one of the blurry figures onstage was my date. I bought shots for the roadies.

I then introduced myself to the guitarist for the opening band. “Do you guys have an album out?” I asked him, and he gave me a free CD I didn’t care about or want. Then he invited me backstage. From the sound booth we watched my date’s band play a second set to a now-scanty audience. He put his arms around me from behind and I felt his erection press into my ass. I wondered if my inattentive date could see me grinding against the guitarist or if the lights were too bright.

Heading back to the green room, we were joined by the opening bassist, and I took sips from his Sapporo as I took turns making out with both guys. Bandmates wandered in and out and I made halfhearted attempts to pull my dress down and push my boobs back from where they were spilling out of my dress. They were probably used to witnessing dirty groupie shit anyway, and that was half the appeal.

It was the same spirit of rock and roll filth that led me to accept when one of the guys mentioned the backstage shower. Jamming the broken door shut with a chair, we stripped our clothes off as the water got warm. There was no soap, so we just kind of splashed around for a few minutes and rubbed up against one another before some poor person who needed to use the bathroom started banging on the door. I shudder to think what kind of fungus I may have picked up from a shower in a backstage bathroom, but at the time the story seemed good enough to override health concerns.

Trashed and soaking wet at 2 am on a school night, I decided I’d better head home. I had what I thought would be an awkward run-in with Aaron as I headed outside to get a cab, but overall he seemed more amused than angry that I had spent the evening “getting to know the other band” as he put it.

Maybe he was worth another chance after all.

Still Here, Bitches

This blog isn't dead, it's just sleeping. And doesn't it look like an angel when it sleeps?

In the meantime, I'd like to welcome all the folks who actually read the articles and found me in this month's Playboy. The more perverts, the merrier!

It's just that lately a lot of people have been paying me cash money to write about myself, and it's keeping me a little busy. Case in point: check out my piece in this month's Elle. But don't get too excited; I wrote it under a pseudonym.

Sweden in the East Village

No matter how lame and gentrified its current incarnation may be, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the East Village, maybe because the East Village seems to have a soft spot for hookers. It’s a place where arty, weird girls have been funding their projects with handjobs for decades, and even though CBGB’s is gone and was by all reports pretty lame for years before it was gone, the part-time prostitute lives on.

Reading the excellent Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil (Call me!) I was amazed by how often prostitution was casually referred to; it seems like almost all our seminal punk heroes dated prostitutes. When you think about it, who’s a better mate for guys who half the time were lazy, broke-ass, drug addicts? Of course, when you’re part of a subculture that prides itself on not giving a fuck about society’s rules, as well as general unemployability, prostitution seems like a pretty natural end to the progression. But it’s not just punk: in artistic NY prostitution is a tradition, from the punk scene to the Dupont twins sleeping with Warhol and other older men for hundred-dollar bills, even Holly Golightly and her 50 bucks for the powder room. In Seattle, Kathleen Hanna and Courtney Love stripped their way to success as frontwomen of their respective bands, even the salons of Paris had great philsophers and legendary painters hobnobbing with whores, women who, having broken society’s sexual strictures, often broke the mold with their robust wits and quick minds as well. Viewed through the lens of artistic talent, prostitution looks more like an amusing quirk than a character flaw, another indulgence, like drug use, of the young, poor, and aimless. And historically, the East Village has been a hotbed of that indulgence.

So it was with a smile on my face that I strode past Tompkins Square park on an unseasonably warm day, on my way to meet a man who wanted me to jerk him off with my tits. A group of students from the nearby elementary school stopped me to ask me if I knew about some horrible injustice in the world. I leaned down to sign their petition, but the head girl had started her schpiel and wasn’t going to stop until she reached her now uneccessary conclusion, “So would you please sign this petition?” Her teacher strolled over and smiled at me and I smiled at them and was on my way, wondering what those cute kids and their cute teacher would think if they knew they had just stopped a prostitute on the way to an appointment.

Patrick wanted me to come over, take my top off, oil up my tits, and jerk him off with them. Twice. Easy enough, right? Yet when I arrived I found that sort of thing is harder to segue into than it seems. Do I just come in and pop ‘em out? Do I chit-chat first, or go in for a kiss? Did he want me to touch him with my hand or just my tits? Did he expect a blowjob?

We sat at opposite ends of the couch awkwardly.

So I took my top off, an ice breaker that has yet to fail me. He asked me to take my bra off, and once unhindered, he rubbed my breasts a little, flicked his tongue over my nipples, then pushed a small bottle of baby oil in my direction.

I squirted the oil into my hand and ran my slippery palm over his cock, feeling very hooker-y. I slid my slick hand up and down him in a few long strokes and he moaned. He gestured for me to get on my knees, which I took to mean it was titty time. I leaned over him and wrapped my D-cups around him, pushing them together until I had his dick in a choke-hold between them. I began to slide them up and down, unsure of whether or not I was actually capable of bringing him to orgasm this way. Adding to my doubt was the fact that now my hands were slippery with baby oil, which caused them to slip around and made it hard to hold my tits together.

I was reassured by the fact that his moaning reached a fever pitch. It was actually hot; he sounded like a 12-year-old getting his first blowjob, almost surprised by his own hyper-arousal. “OH GOD, OH GOD,” he grunted and gasped, and within a minute had spurted cum all over my breasts. I laughed and he passed me a towel to clean up.

“You wanted to me to stick around, right?” I asked, but he told me he was actually running late, so I just collected the money sitting on the kitchen counter. “Is this for me?” I asked dumbly, like maybe it was the OTHER stack of 20s he leaves out on his counter. I felt good. You guys know about me and my tits; they get so excited when they’re invited to the party. Combine the breast play with his enthusiastic reaction, and I was hoping he’d call again soon.

I walked back past the park, no kids in sight this time.