It appears sex work has become somewhat of a trendy accessory to my identity, a comically large bow that obstructs the rest of my outfit. This realization carries a specific comedic effect, as the identity of a job balloons in my hiatus of whoring. Rare to see clients while becoming a more illusive creature on social media, the gig no longer takes up my precious time in the same way, released from the silky bindings of hair/nails/wax/shoot/shop/pose/posture/consume/extract. Certainly, I am available to the practice, but (for now) my lifestyle no longer requires the ample dedication to the maintenance. After ten years, I’ve finally adopted a clean break between my real self and my working persona.
And yet, I feel as though I’ve slipped into the realm of “sex work (writer)” even with this separation. Despite barely writing and not even working sex, this becomes the new, seemingly inescapable marker of my life. Perhaps it is my fault, for not holding a more opaque veil between my writing, my hooking, and my advocacy, or for thinking that the viewer would be more scandalized by other aspects of my work rather than the idea I have sex for money. But often I forget the taboo in sex, the taboo in money, the crossing of the two being a salacious, and perhaps even morally questionable, act to an outsider.
This is my problem, unwillingness to commit, the avaricious desire to be two separate things at once.
During an interview months ago, the writer asked “what is your chapbook about?” When I responded with something along the lines of “capitalism and sex work framed through cardinal sin,” they were surprised. The flashy nature of prostitution blurred the subtext of what I believed to be inherently political. This job ceases to exist outside of any economic model, though many think of the profession as completely separate from it. Sex and work, simultaneously neither to civilians.
I realize I was never that good at hooking because I never let the line get blurred. I never wanted to be a girlfriend, a therapist, or object of desire outside the allotted time and role play requirements. For a while I thought (and was told) that this is what made me good at the job, this firm maintenance of boundary and healthy compartmentalization. This was the key to longevity, but now in my old whore age (remember, dog years), I fear I've missed my chance to drink the koolaid. The fantasy not just to indulge the client, but also to indulge the self, to be young forever, to front luxury eternal, to get everything you want.
Deconstructing my identity to sex work, specifically “high end sex work,” involved a lot of thought about the taxonomy of luxury. Do I want this or I do want people to know I’m paid. Do I wish to look like this or do I want to signal to potential clients I’m expensive/available/discreet. I purchase an accessory to become an accessory, my client flaunting that he can afford the girl and her taste. Forced to signal parvenu with my wish to remain proletarian. How much may one embody a persona before sinking into the skin.
More and more of my coworkers are going face-in, blurring their most identifiable features (namely, face and tattoos) for privacy or security purposes. I wonder if they sense something I can not, holding premonitions of a tide turning. Digital privacy is something so coveted, yet impossible to maintain in an age where both data is endlessly extracted and authenticity becomes a valuable currency. The line blurs between real and hyperreal with the fantasy of the client, the digital world for all to see, and the marketing (which is a fantasy in and of itself), all splicing through the material. It becomes clear that with all this at play— the face, the privacy, the artfully curated brand which is all you have to show for a liberal arts degree— the job seems to ask of more and more. Reveal yourself, your real self, to the viewer.
The gentrification of sex work is a gentrification of the self, the dissolving of politic once held in identity. It is a forgetting that our history is one of criminals, those who rebelled against patriarchy and traditional systems, people on the fringes, often forced out of the confines of a conventional society. The whore luckily does not require the politics of the wife (her foil), refuting a place negotiated by respectability, and existing almost in spite of such ridiculous demand. But our personal desire is not divorced from these systems— from capital, from gender, from luxury. We exist and operate under them, sometimes with nuance and sometimes without. Our wish for money, security, morphed from the client’s wish, palatability, desirability, unadulterated fantasy. The whore, while politicized under the patriarchy, capitalism, and the state, may fail to develop an adequate political understanding of the work. Perhaps it is at a loss of true community for some, a lack of women older and more experienced than you sharing the history, the crucial lessons of the work, rarely documented in the straight world. Or rather, the dissonance arrives from the classic American prophecy— you’re just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.
Right now is probably the easiest time to get into the industry and the hardest to make any money from it. The club is dead, porn is free, and everything is expensive. For many years, if you wanted to do sex work, you either had to go into a dungeon, a club, put up an ad, break into the porn industry, or build a fanbase of patrons through a melange of clip sites. With the advent of the social media, the death of the newspaper, and the ever present metaphysical reality we’ve created online, a brand new erotic on-demand service appears— OnlyFans. The site ushered in one of the largest introduction of new workers in 2020, a credit to the pandemic, which has streamlined even further the process of becoming a sex worker. All you need is a valid id and internet service.
As stigma decreases, as more and more women stop associating sex with morality, and as the American middle class continues to shrink, the market opens up to a wider breadth of workers. No longer exclusive to the underclass of career criminals, or lumpenproletariat, the work is now available to the petite bourgeoisie, who arrive to the industry with a class interest that opposes the lumpenprole worker. The petite bourgeoisie sex worker is not seen as a traitor to her class in this method of operating, in spite of her criminality and non-traditional means, as she still serves the interest of capitalism (and later, fascism). Her aspiration to sell professional managerial pussy bodes well, allowing her to align with fellow bourgeoise in interest and values, but effectively creates a deep stratification among workers of a lower class who are engaged in the same labor. She is a business woman before she is ever a whore.
It is as doomed as prophecy, writing about sex work. I fail to think of it as such, because it is never just about that. Always about money, about womanhood, about violence, capital, power. It’s cliche to say, sex which is never about sex, and work, always only one thing, still constantly misunderstood. And so, the gentrification of sex work is a step in tune with a larger gentrification of the worker’s identity in this gig economy, a mere adoption of the most American values— consumerism, capitalism, and exaggerated stories about bootstrapping recited by members of a comfortable class. This is my dissonance, the identity of the worker becoming sanitized for public consumption, and the realization that the inherent politic in the work appears now dissolved.
So it is here where I reveal my real self, my idealist want, my utter contempt, a whore gone rouge in hermitage. Forever in alliance to the woman turning the $20 dollar trick, and rarely with the woman who turns a $2,000 dollar one.
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