Loss of Love

I’m beginning this entry on 11/11, thinking about wishes. If I had one wish right now, it might be to skip ahead through to the end of the pandemic. But that idea is abstract. Who might I unwittingly lose and not realize until it’s too late? How many deaths would I be skipping through, without allowing for mourners to mourn and show their respect? A better wish would be for an end to the pandemic without further casualties. That one is altruistic. My personal discomfort shouldn’t be the primary consideration, anyway. I just want it to end. I remember in March when I had no concept of how long this might last. I thought we would be out of it after the equivalent of a “flu season” had passed, so after three, maybe four months? I didn’t think I would be away from the job that was sustaining me for so long. I didn’t think it would be a year and a half before I’d be back dancing.

Perhaps the most frustrating part is that it’s all there, if I wanted to go back. My friends are working. My club is open. My managers have called me, and texted me to see when I might return to pick up a shift. I feel like Tantalus, hungry and thirsty even as I stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree.

This year I’ve felt like I’ve been fighting a battle of up and down. I know which way is up, and which way is down, but all around me, people want to convince me that they’ve switched.

“Didn’t you hear? Up is down, nowadays.” At the moment, it’s a battle of feelings. I feel like this is true. I feel like that is false. And there’s no convincing the truth of feeling.

Except that I felt that I might be dancing again at this point, and I’m clearly not. In fact, I’ve been struggling to dance even when I have to. What was once performing for a crowd--and admittedly oftentimes a bored, inattentive one at that--has been contorted to fit inside my tiny studio captured on the tinier screen of my cell phone. There’s no energy or audience. I feel like I’m dancing into the void. Watchers are anonymous. They usually have their cams off, so instead of human contact, I see a gray avatar. I have to toggle between apps to see if I’ve received digital tips, and thank everybody’s screen names accordingly. And while it’s the next best thing, especially compared to the nothing I was engulfed in before, it still feels so disconnected, I could float away.

Stripping involves being handled. Sometimes I feel like a therapy animal. Sad men hold me for warmth, attention, to regain a connection to their eroticism after feeling cold for many years. But I cater to all men. Happy men, sad men, angry men, emotionally stable men, and men on benders. Sometimes it felt like I was giving more to them than I was receiving, but now I feel like I’m missing something I didn’t realize I was getting. I provided a nurturing touch, but in turn I received touch.

I entertained men in vulnerable states, whether from emotionality or lust. Too much has been said about people who provide the services I do, but too little has been written by us. Or maybe we were all writing, but what we wrote wasn’t considered particularly important or worth preserving. I have a hunch it’s the latter. Maybe additionally, it hasn’t been preserved because it was too damning. In a world where cismen are constantly fretting about penis size, sex workers could clarify who is longest, girthiest, firmest, most properly vertical, squirts the furthest, etc. and concisely put the matter to bed. But on the other hand we could also list whose is the smelliest, has the strangest bend, has the worst infection, takes the longest to come or doesn’t come at all, whose cum comes in colorful varieties, the viscosity of said cum, and everything else. It’s a rabbit hole, to add another pun to the mix.

My work has shifted, and so have I.

In March, I didn’t know my boundaries, now that it’s November and I still don’t know for sure. I know what I had to do to maintain my clients for this long. But it’s still interesting how I went from half whore to full whore more or less accidentally. I don’t regret it. In fact, I wish whoring followed Girl Scout rules and we got patches for reaching milestones. One bareskin hand job. One open mouthed kiss. One condom wrapped blow job. Instead it’s a battle against shame. On the one hand, I’m not ashamed of what I do, on the other, the condescension I receive when explaining whoring through the apocalypse can induce a bit of shame. Why do I do what I do when I could be doing other things? Why do I do anything? Because yolo.

Gemini Ketamine Man is working to slowly but surely dominate Covid-19 testing in the music industry. When we began to see evidence of a second spike, he laughingly showed me his phone screen. A friend of his who he works with sent a gif of Snoop Dogg dancing through a crowd of people. It’s one of those “hell yeah” gifs, one indicating celebration. A spike meant GKM and his friend were about to make a lot of money.

Charlie: He’s so bad!

Charlie said it, laughing giddily. It’s one of those situations where GKM winning means that every now and again I get a little bit of the spoils, so tangentially I win from our global catastrophe. It’s not a line of logic I ever imagined being part of, and yet here I am. I don’t think I could be making it financially through this period if I wasn’t looped into this philosophical wormhole of a situation. I am the black nonbinary sex worker attached to a rich white man profitting off of a global pandemic that has killed over a million people, and likely over 250,000 just in the US by the end of next week (242,000 at the time of writing).

What Charlie is doing isn’t exactly immoral. He is providing concierge rapid testing for award shows, music videos, casinos, and various individual celebrities trying to move about. His work isn’t affecting the overall push to test people regularly. He isn’t inflating the prices for average people. He is charging a premium to very wealthy people and organizations to provide a service for the impatient--for those rich enough not to have to wait. There was a market need and he happened to be a man capable of fulfilling that need. Testing in general is good. The more people who test and register their results in contact tracing apps, the better equipped we are to navigate the virus. And he isn’t doing some of the other predatory work that is managing to thrive while most industries have faced the precipice of collapse. He isn’t a debt collector or an eviction facilitator. His work is essentially neutral. It’s neither helping nor hurting. We could go back and forth and say, “allowing the music industry to continue creating videos and hosting shows provides needed diversions for people as they continue social distancing and other isolating yet necessary precautions,” but on the other hand we could say, “forcing people to work while the world spins into utter chaos and people face life and death is dehumanizing and for an inessential workforce.” But people need jobs to eat and pay rent. But we shouldn’t have systems that force people to work jobs where they face possible exposure to a deadly disease, and there are enough resources for people to survive, the problem is the handful of people who hoard said resources. I could argue in circles until I’m blue in the face, and I do internally, as the recipient of crumbs of GKM’s fortune. As the person he confides in when he succeeds. As the pussy he fucks for affirmation and comfort.

With the beginning of new preparations for another award show, GKM has been notably less settled. When he’s centered, he exudes an upbeat effervescence. Something I’ve admired about him is that he seems to be as happy as he is rich. A lot of wealthy people aren’t particularly happy. They don’t enjoy their wealth. They worry about their precariousness. They worry that people or the government will steal from them. They worry those closest to them will spill their secrets ;) . But Charlie is a happy person. He appreciates his life, cares for his relationships, and isn’t too precious with any of his possessions. When Charlie is down, I sense it immediately. Part of that is our degree of intimacy. The other part is just me being a very sensitive person. Why? My mutha! Shaking my damn head.

When I came by on Sunday for a last minute visit, I was also a bit on edge. I was about to start my period. I’d spent the entire day cooking and then handling a photoshoot. I’d tried to postpone the date until Monday, but GKM had insisted. He wasn’t sure if he could swing Monday, and I couldn’t afford to have a week without one of his outcalls. Additionally, the election had finally been called, and I felt a combination of relief and tearful anger. It had gotten so bad. I was angry the country had chosen an unhinged despot, and that an unprecedented number of people had voted for him again. Regardless of Biden’s victory, the reality was that nearly half of Americans wanted to continue to “Make America Great Again,” by imprisoning BIPOC and maintaining migrant detention centers that have separated children from their parents. I stared across the dinner table at Charlie as we ate. I didn’t know how he voted or if he voted. He considers himself to be a fiscal conservative. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Where his allegiance might lie was a mystery to me. I could have avoided the topic, but I felt the less reigned in PMS Selena taking over.

Me: I’m just relieved. It’s been hard not knowing for the past few days, but finally we have a winner.

Charlie: If the election was fair. We still don’t know yet.

I felt a headache coming on. I reached for my glass of tequila and soda water. I needed to drink if I was going to let an election doubter to fuck me. Of course, it’s for money, but at that moment it hurt in a personal way. I wanted to *nope* out of the evening. It felt like no amount of money would be enough. I felt tears prickling at the tip of my nose. I blinked them away.

Me: It has been a harrowing four years. And to see that such a large percentage of Americans voted for him again hurts. Because it’s a vote to say that people who look like me don’t deserve to be in this country. It’s a vote that says that people who look like they could be my brothers and sisters deserve to be in cages. It’s a vote that says that they don’t want people like me here.

I finished speaking and stuffed my face with the Thai food we’d ordered. I wasn’t about to fight him any further, and I knew he didn’t want that either. He’s the kind of person who thinks that at the end of the day, politics can be put to bed. I’m the kind of person to bring politics to bed with me. I drank more tequila. I wanted to do K, but I also didn’t. I wanted to preserve my senses to be able to drive home as soon as we were done.

Even after two years of intermittently seeing each other, and now nearly five months of consistent weekly visits, he still could not perceive the impact his beliefs had upon my life. How long does one have to date a Black to finally realize that politics aren’t aesthetic? To realize that elections have real life consequences and saying “fuck it” to a rigged system has reprocussions that people like me will feel? I don’t know if he will ever understand, even if I take him down the wormhole of educational leftist YouTube videos (BreadTube). Charlie always says that he loves how much I nurture him. He tells me that he wants to give to me the way that I give to him. In his world, that means back rubs and occasional gifts. But to me, that would mean studies in empathy.

Recently, while I was taking my meditative dive pondering the ethical implications of my work in the aftermath of my conversation with Danny, I came to the realization that I might love GKM and Longshoreman. Not in a romantic way, but in a human way. I care about them. Maybe it’s all the oxytocin we exchange between cuddling and sex, but I care and intermittently miss them when we space out outcalls or pause for life. The fact that I might care about them enough to love them made GKM’s revelation even more upsetting. So upsetting that I decided my affection was misplaced. If GKM could not step away from his financial concerns to care about my quality of life; if he could vote in support of an administration hell bent on my disenfranchisement; if he could puppet propaganda news to undermine democracy; I could not love him.

I tried to remain upbeat. It didn’t matter how I felt as long as I could act the part. Admittedly, I’m not a good actor. I definitely quit acting for a reason, and it wasn’t my overwhelming success. Thankfully GMK makes it easy. He prefers low lights, and he isn’t very into eye contact when we’re having sex. I can shut my eyes and drift into my own world of thoughts. That night I fantasized about being home with my partner. I thought about what it would feel like returning to being myself, the way I am when I’m truly comfortable.

It was enough to get through the loss of love.