A Solid Chunk of Money

Last week was a wonderful experiment that demonstrated why I need to have solid boundaries. The great irony was that I was the one overstepping my limits. My clients were all respectful, and relatively easy to wrangle, but my own impulse to overbook myself and push my own capacity left me spread so thin that I hardly felt like a person by Friday. I was a pleasure bot, whose function was to please. None of it was intentional. Initially, I’d set up outcalls for Wednesday and Friday, which is entirely manageable, but then GKM requested my Monday, which I couldn’t pass up. Except that he cancelled the Monday, and then rebooked for Thursday, creating a very a-typical three day stretch of outcalls. Then the icing on the cake came when Mr. Robinson booked Tuesday, last minute per usual. I could have turned down the last minute bookings, but I was a week out from my period, and my poverty-child brain panics over the idea of not working for a week, so I overcompensated. I knew it would be grueling, but I figured I could deep breathe my way through the week and rake in a solid chunk of money.

My reward at the end of the slog would be a pair of Naked Wolfe boots I’d been eyeing for months. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t buy them until I could do 5 consecutive pull-ups again, and I’d reached my goal, which meant I was entitled to splurge a little. Plus, the dense week of outcalls would help offset the guilt of dropping a few hundred dollars on shoes. While I can afford the things that I want, I live with an eye toward scarcity. Nothing is guaranteed, especially economic stability under late stage capitalism. And beyond that, I’ve been very concerned about my consumption. I love stuff, especially new and trendy stuff, but I’ve been increasingly concerned about how the things I want are produced, the labor and environmental impacts, and the reality that by continuing to consume new products, I am hurting a lot of people. I’m probably participating in either sweatshops that employ children and release harmful chemicals into the environment, or I’m benefitting from the prison labor that is modern day slavery. But I’m also a human who loves shiny new things, so ethics aside, I bought those boots. And that lightened the mental toll last week took on me, at least slightly.

***

Tuesday, Mr. Robinson asked to see me solo. I was surprised he hadn’t cooked up another threesome with Valeska, but it was a bit of a relief. Mr. Robinson is very different when it’s just the two of us. He doesn’t maintain his showman-esque bravado, in fact he’s pretty easy to talk to. We met at a hotel a few minutes away from his condo, since his daughter was home, and he likes his privacy. Perhaps additionally because I’m only five or six years older than her, and that’s just not a comfortable meeting.

Mr. Robinson: Shit, I forgot condoms.

Me: Damn, that’s unfortunate.

Mr. Robinson: That sucks. I guess we’ll just have to have fun without having sex.

I was not upset by the lack of condoms. I’d been worried that starting my week with Mr. Robinson’s big dick would leave me with a bruised cervix and three more consecutive days of getting pounded. I was relieved, and Mr. Robinson could tell.

Mr. Robinson: Maybe that’s better for you. I know sometimes I can be too big for you.

It was his curse and his blessing. It was clear he hadn’t received much, if any, negative feedback about his penis size from his previous partners. In his world, big dick = good dick. In my world of whoring it up, big dicks create longevity problems.

Me: I mean, I’m a petite person. It makes me think of a joke where the comedian said something like, “You may have a twelve-inch cock, but I have a six-inch vagina”.

Mr. Robinson: I hadn’t thought of it that way. Do women like small dicks?

Me: I do, especially a spirited small dick.

Mr. Robinson: It’s probably better for you, when you’re a “working girl”.

Me: Yeah.

Mr. Robinson: What do you like about small dicks?

Me: Well, it’s easier to enjoy certain positions more. With big dicks, it’s like you’re destroying my cervix, but with smaller dicks, I can do a lot more without experiencing pain.

Mr. Robinson: Huh, interesting. Do I hurt you?

It was a loaded question. There’s no way to say “yes” in this scenario without damaging my business. Yes, Mr. Robinson’s dick can be painful, especially when he’s guiding the depth and rhythm of penetration; however, it’s not because of his size per se, it’s because his stroke game is perplexing. He fucks like a person smacking the base of a ketchup bottle to get the final dregs out.

Me: No, you’re fine.

I always have to spin my criticisms of men into some statement where it’s every man, *except you,* even when I mean every man, *including you*.

Men are fragile. I say it every week, and every week I encounter more and more examples of male fragility. I don’t know if Mr. Robinson believed what I said, or if it was simply enough to say those hollow words to suspend his disbelief for the duration of our session. Whether or not he believed me, he came twice, and seemed satisfied by our Tuesday rendezvous.

***

Wednesday, I visited one of my newer clients. I haven’t talked about him yet even though I’ve been seeing him semi-regularly over the past few months, because I like him as a human. It’s not to say that I don’t like some of my other regulars as people, but I have a different sort of compassion for this person. We began our meetings based around the lunar cycle. The first time, it was a full moon. The second time, a new moon. Lately, we’ve ditched the lunar calendar and met whenever he’s been free and looking for companionship. He’d spent over a decade married to an abusive narcissist, and after five years of personal recovery, he wanted to dip his toes back into the dating world. While the world of romance can be one cruelty after another, I’ve been around as a bit of a consolation prize when things haven’t panned out. Of course, I’m more than that, but I like to think of things that way. I can be a source of comfort now and again as he puts himself out there. I’m protective over him, even with our age differential. While there is a lot more to say about this man, I’m maintaining his privacy. For now.

***

By Thursday, I was exhausted and gritting my teeth through my sessions. GKM is kind, generous, and a lot of other positive things, but I am utterly repulsed by him at this point. It’s built up over time. First it was his cologne that clings to my clothes, even days after I’ve had contact with him. When I smell it, I immediately feel nauseous. I don’t know if it’s the scent, or the combination of things I’ve come to conflate with that scent. The second turnoff was learning that he definitely voted for Trump, not once, but twice. Regardless of his care for me in our intimate relationship, it was clear he didn’t care about me in any macro sense. The third and final tipping point came in December when he had his veneers redone. For a while, I could not talk about this because it was so disgusting and a little piece of me died as I entertained him through the recovery process. I felt like an old timey whore, entertaining a man with a festering flesh wound. His oral surgeon included removal of all of his old veneers and a bone graft before replacing his teeth. There was a week or so between when he got his old veneers removed and when he got his final set. When I met up with him during the process, his mouth was swollen, but he had a temporary set of veneers covering his scraggly sawed down teeth. His mouth smelled like it was recovering, and he wanted to kiss, which was a horror story of a moment. I dodged, but even his saliva left a lasting odor on my body. It took weeks for him to fully recover, and now I’m permanently scarred by the memory of getting through that month. To his credit, he brushed and used mouthwash constantly, almost obsessively, attempting to cut through the odor, but to little avail. Why did I continue seeing him, even while my stomach churned and my head spun with nausea? Because he was giving me a Christmas bonus in addition to my regular payments. It was a nice little nest egg, and I figured I could survive the rough patch with the bonus nudging me on. However, my willingness to press on proved to be detrimental to our overall relationship, and now I conflate my interactions with GKM with an overwhelming sense of visceral disgust.

Plus sometimes he’ll let his political beliefs slip, which makes things even less tolerable.

Charlie: I don’t know how I feel about these “vaccination passports”. I don’t trust the government to have that information, especially this administration.

Me: …

Charlie: I’ll just leave it at that.

Charlie is a bit of an anti vaxxer. He immunized his kids years before vaccination became a politicized issue, but I can tell that his beliefs have changed over the past decade. He is on the fence about getting the Covid vaccine because he runs various homeopathic businesses and receiving a vaccination somehow is contradictory to the “natural” wellness lifestyle he is promoting. Not that intravenous vitamin drips are natural in any way, but go figure. He’s also very concerned about government surveillance, which is reasonable, however he is much less concerned with private enterprise surveillance. He even has used his Covid testing business as a means to mine the personal information of his clientele. They sign up for rapid tests, he adds them to a mailing list advertising his IV drip services. He’s fine with private enterprises telling him what to do and collecting his data, but has major qualms when the government does it. I’ve also found some of his verbiage lately to be tinged with Q Anon conspiracy theory phrases. I don’t think he entirely believes in a *baby eating cult of wealthy elites who sex traffick children*, but one can only listen to so much Tucker Carlson before taking a dive off into the deep end of right wing propaganda.

He and I have always been on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but prior to the pandemic, I didn’t have to deal with it so closely. Before, I could handle everyone with a greater degree of mental distance, because my outcalls were sporadic, and I had a constant revolving door of regulars at the strip club. The fatigue was different then. Now, it’s because everything is incredibly intimate. I know details of exwives, the ages of everyone’s children, interpersonal conflicts at work--all of this useless information occupying space in my head that much more useful information could and should occupy.

***

It’s taking a lot more emotional effort to keep my shit together handling men. While “not all men” are egregious systemic failures, as a group, they are wack af. My customers have even noticed my increasingly sour feelings about men, and they have expressed some concern. Evan even made a playlist after I made some offhand comment about men, that he titled “I Just Fucking Hate Men Right Now”. Perhaps it’s the circumstances of this moment and having to work intimately without the normal reprieve of time with my queer, sex working homies. I always loved the club because of the strippers, not because of the men. Men can rot. Strippers are deities. I’ve had to listen to the inane dribblings of these maladapted creatures for a whole year now, without the padding of sane locker room conversations with coworkers, and it makes me feel unhinged. I started to wonder how I did it before. And lately, I’ve begun to wonder, how long I can continue entertaining people I consider to be lesser life forms? lol jk, (don’t unsubscribe) but kinda.

I’ve also started looking into grad school. I don’t see grad school as an end to my time as a sex worker. I will inevitably need that sex work shmoney to make it through the blood guzzling leech that is the higher education system, even with a grad school stipend. But I’ve reached a point of mental exhaustion that I didn’t expect to reach so early into my career. Of course, we are in *an unprecedented time,* and perhaps returning to the club will help rekindle my love of the sex profession, but another part of me has come to this pragmatic place where I feel incredibly neutral. Yes, sex work should not be criminalized, and sex workers deserve respect, acknowledgement, inclusion, and protection, but it is very much not a profession for everyone. It takes a major toll over time, even to the best of us, and right now I’m wrestling with the toll it has taken on me in contrast to my more lofty and optimistic ideals.

***

By Friday, my breasts were so swollen that they looked fake. Normally Hassan calls them my “soft boys,” but on Friday he poked them and remarked

Hassan: Them’s is hard boys.

PMS symptoms were ravaging my body. I could literally feel the little cysts in my breasts as I attempted to massage them out before heading to WeHo for my final outcall. Corey had reappeared. You may remember him from a very horny pre-Thanksgiving entry where I just wanted to get fucked by pretty much anybody. I was crawling up the wall with ovulation horniness the last time we’d gotten together. This time, I was on the opposite end of the spectrum. I couldn’t muster an ounce of sexual energy. My pussy was dry. My tits hurt. I wriggled my way into a lingerie set and thigh high stockings, hoping to compensate visually for what I wasn’t bringing to the table energetically. Admittedly, I looked fire. I don’t half step, even when I’m dissociating from my work, I am a professional dick handler.

I normally allot four hours to my customers for sessions, but I was determined to shave at least an hour off of the session. Not because Corey is intolerable, but because I was spent. Plus, Corey was paying my minimum rate for full service work, and I didn’t feel motivated to work as hard as normal for $750. I’ve had most of my customers switch to consistently paying me $1k for a session, plus a tip. At this point, I don’t intend to take on anybody new unless they adjust to the $1k rate. I don’t have time or energy to spare.

The session with Corey felt very much like we were shooting a porno at home. I watched him take me in and internally choreograph the various positions he wanted to fuck me in. It was as if there was a mental checklist he wanted to check off for his spank bank. Every few minutes he would decide he needed to see me in a different orientation, and either he would instruct me to do something or I would guess and check to see if I was doing what he wanted.

Corey: Did you bring your toy from last time?

I had, but I didn’t want to get off. I wanted him to get off so that I could go home and stuff my face with beef bulgogi.

Me: Uh, no. I didn’t this time. Rats!

It was a pathetic half-assed lie, but he didn’t probe any further. We continued fucking like we were shooting a porno, until he finally exhausted his fantasy vault, at which point I finished him off with a handy and called it a night.

When I got into my car, I felt both ebullient and like I could cry. There was nothing left in me, and my fucking bra was itchy. My shirt tag was itchy. My thong was all the way up my ass. I couldn’t wait to peel everything off and feel like a human. I was relieved to be alone, and yet I felt incredibly lonely. I couldn’t fully explain all that I had experienced. Nothing bad had happened, and yet cumulatively it had been very bad for me. I grappled with the complexity, as I tucked away my money. The end count didn’t even matter.