Sloppy Beginnings

People always ask me how to figure out what kind of sex work is right for them, and I tell them, “You won’t know until you know.” I haven’t made a flowchart or anything, but maybe I should. Maybe a questionnaire would be better. Do you relate to people better in person or online? How do you feel about sexual pictures and videos of yourself living online forever? Would you like to make work that has the potential to be profitable in the future without any immediate guarantee of return, or would you prefer to immediately make money? Do you like working alone or with people? Do you like to work with security, or do you feel like you’re capable of facilitating a safe environment for yourself? How do you feel about strangers touching you? Are you open to having sex with a person twice your age? Do you get along with strangers or are deeply introverted? Are you coordinated? How do you feel about people watching you? Are you a capable communicator? Do you want to inflict pain on people? What’s the lowest dollar amount you would perform services for? How would you handle a situation with a client pushing your limits? How would you handle a client refusing to pay your rate? Are you capable of negotiating or do you prefer to work in a place where rates are set and enforced? Are you comfortable paying a percentage of your profit toward a website or house fee? Does competition encourage you to work harder or does it hinder your productivity? Can you work a job nobody respects? Can you conform to cis standards to make some money or do you feel capable of cultivating a queer following that may not be able to support you as much as a cishet base?

There are so many factors to consider. If I could do it again, I would have jumped straight into stripping while I was in college. Even though I hardly had any time, in retrospect, stripping as a student is such a sweet spot. You can dance without the same level of stigma because you’re working toward an education, you’re one of the “salvagables,” unlike us hopeless career heauxs pushing thirty, fourty, or fifty. Now I lie and tell people I’ve only been at it “for a few months,” or “about half a year”. But how did I begin? Before I was Selena, I was baby Alana.

I was living in Baltimore, I’d just graduated, which was somewhat of a relief but I also knew I was getting cut off. My grandparents had funded my astronomically expensive education. If my grandmother hadn’t married my rich white step grandfather, none of this would have been possible. He had wanted me to apply to his alma mater, Cornell, the ugly sister of the Ivy’s. Apparently he donates to them annually, which came as quite a surprise to me considering how frugally he lives his own life. He and my grandmother had given me the incredible gift of higher education without the crushing terror that is student loan debt and in return I did my best to prove I was worthy of their generosity. I graduated Summa Cum Lauda, even though the final year I hated every second. I walked across the stage to receive my diploma with a gag in my mouth. My family was disappointed the occasion wasn’t more joyous for me, but I was furious so many of my black and brown peers had dropped out because of discrimination; I hated that the curriculum wasn’t built to include contributions from black and queer artists; and I despised that the board was run by rich old white people who expected us to grovel for more financial support. I kicked the dust from my shoes and buried my diploma in my closet.

Another adventure graduation promised was an end to my healthcare. I had been covered under Tricare, but due to some oversight in the ACA, Tricare was not included in the expansion since it’s a military benefit, so instead of having a few years of cushion between graduation and finding long term employment, I was due to lose care with my upcoming birthday. Additionally, during college I’d had the privilege of flying for free on Delta as my father’s dependent. I could fly standby for as long as I was enrolled in school. Lucky for me, due to some glitch in the system, I could keep my benefits for one year after graduation, which meant I needed to get the travel bug out of my system before settling into long term employment. The question was how I’d be able to afford to travel working my minimum wage job at an ice cream shop.

I began camming when the ice cream shop substantially cut my hours over the winter. To be fair, the ice cream business is quite seasonal, and if the owner had exclusively run things in the summer, she likely would have accumulated more money, but she cared about keeping us employed. She wanted to make sure we were getting paychecks, even during the slow season, but she couldn’t afford to keep us around for our normal hours. There were some weeks when I was working only nine to twelve hours at minimum wage. I was hardly eating, but it wasn’t the first time I’d struggled with poverty. I could make $40 stretch to accommodate a week’s worth of groceries. I had never been a big partier, and most of the Baltimore scene I participated in was grungy warehouse art parties with two dollar beer. I didn’t have huge camming goals, even though I’d heard all of the miracle stories of cammers making a hundred thousand annually. I simply wanted to be able to pay my rent.

Camming is probably my least favorite form of sex work. Admittedly, I was trying to do it the cheapest way possible. I had a shitty external cam without any proper mic. I was working in my blood red bedroom without a flattering backdrop or studio lighting. I shared an internet connection with four other people, a few of which had intense gaming hobbies, which meant we were all fighting for bandwidth. And, I had no substantial social media presence or professional pictures of myself to advertise. I was so poorly equipped for camming, but luckily I had a few regulars who kept things interesting. My favorite was John Goodman, unrelated to the famous John Goodman. He had a muscle worship fetish. He wanted to watch me flex and do various calisthenics. I’d never considered my muscle definition to be part of my erotic appeal, in fact I’d always been deeply self-conscious about having an athletic body rather and a curvy “womanly” body. It was a morale modest boost, but it meant a lot to me at that time.

I barely made it through that post graduation winter with my meager camming earnings and the handful of shifts I’d picked up at the candy shop. I started looking for another job, hoping to put my degree to work. With bold naivete, I wandered into a boutique I’d passed a million times and decided to inquire about possible employment opportunities. To my surprise, the owner liked my moxy, and decided to hire me as a seamstress. It seemed like a dream job at first. I loved working with sewing machines and creating garments, even if I was somewhat new to everything. The biggest sticking point was my wage: I was to be paid less than I was earning at the ice cream shop. It hurt to think that the skills I’d spent nearly $200,000 to learn were worth only $10/h. On the bright side, I was guaranteed more consistent hours. I hoped the pay cut would be worth it. I accepted the job and quit my position at the candy shop.

I felt like I was in the right place. My boss was a self-made black female entrepreneur. She’d been renting her shop for over a decade and had a well-established customer base. I didn’t grasp the exact fashion sensibility of the shop, it was something like Gwen Stefani back when she put out L.A.M.B. crossed with Michael Jackson during his military jackets phase. I figured it wasn’t my place to judge whatever my boss had in mind because she clearly knew how to please her fans. I was merely there to facilitate her vision.

The job started off as a dream, but quickly morphed into a fucking nightmare. My first shift, I got an order to produce a simple asymmetrical pleated skirt. I’d made plenty of skirts, it should have been simple. I asked if my boss had a pattern she used. She told me she didn’t use patterns. That was my first red flag. I mean, how does one maintain quality control without patterns? I was like, okay, I can work around that. What about a French Curve and Hip Curve to create my own pattern? She was baffled as to why I would need those things, just for a simple skirt. Why couldn’t I just eyeball it? I told her I would try. To make matters worse, she was giving me these instructions remotely. She had two shops: one in LA, the other in Baltimore. She spent half of her time in each shop, which meant I would need to learn to work without her supervision. A vicious cycle began wherein she would text me at midnight to tell me whether or not I was working the next day; then I’d show up and sometimes have to wait an hour before I could get any instructions for whatever I was working on that day, sometimes she would claim to have given instructions to the other shop workers yet somehow I would always end up the last person privy to those instructions; she would assign me something that could be accomplished much more efficiently with a few patterns and tools, but would refuse to give me anything I needed which would result in me fucking up whatever she wanted, and then she would yell and berate my incompetence, and I would have mini panic attack every night after work. When I was lucky enough to have her in the shop, she would address me with too much familiarity. I knew all about her sex life and romantic partners. I knew she didn’t give head. I knew about her own history of abuse and survival. I was her confidant, and yet I was simultaneously treated as a nuisance, hardly worthy of the wage she was so generous to give me. I hated my life. I’d also stopped taking my anxiety medications, hoping to phase them out so I wouldn’t have to worry about affording medication when I ran out of health insurance. Without realizing it, I had entirely isolated myself from everyone close to me. I was hardly leaving the house because leaving meant contact with other people, and even being looked at was too overwhelming to handle. I was on the verge of tears constantly, and I kept changing my route to work to avoid bumping into men who I knew would hit on me and ruin my day. Eventually it got to the point where I literally couldn’t handle my work sewing because my hands shook with the fear of making a mistake because I knew I would be berated for it. It reminded me of being back at home with my mother and how paralyzed I was around her because every single mistake I made would be relentlessly held against me. I had just started dating my current partner at the time, and he encouraged me to quit. He could see how sick the whole situation was making me. I didn’t know what to do if I quit. In the back of my mind I was like, “just try stripping,” but I was scared. I was afraid I’d do as poorly as I’d done camming. My parents had always told me, “Never quit your job without having another one lined up,” but my job was literally killing me.

One day, I reached my breaking point. I was crying outside the shop. I’d just gotten a meager raise to $12.50/h accompanied with a threat. My boss had told me that my work wasn’t good enough, and that I was still on probation but she wanted to give me a chance. I’d worked so many extra hours without compensation and answered her late night texts without complaint. I was tired of working exhaustively while being regarded as a burden. I quit, and my former boss took it as an act of extreme hostility. She banned me from the premises. I had to get my father to pick up my final check. It was insulting to think that she believed I was capable of doing anything malicious like that. I wasn’t the vindictive party in the situation, but the frustration over the final resolution cemented my resolve. I knew I was making the right decision.

I had a handful of friends who were stripping at a local club. They’d encouraged me to try it for so long, but I hadn’t had the urgency to take the leap until I quit and realized I needed to make money immediately. I went to Forever 21 and bought a single lingerie set and a pair of high heels. I didn’t know what else I needed and I honestly couldn’t afford anything else. I was chipping into my meager savings to purchase my club clothes. I’m a compulsive saver and I hate dipping into my savings even under dire circumstances. I’d been putting away $20 here and there for years with the intention of eventually leaving the US to live somewhere in Brazil for a year. I knew my ability to learn a language was diminishing significantly as I approached twenty-four. I wanted to make the most of my neuroplasticity while my brain was still growing. Immersion seemed to be the best approach, and the deadline for my departure was about a week out from when my flight benefits were set to expire. My girlfriend coached me before I went in to audition. She’d been stripping for years and had an incredible stage persona I admired. We rehearsed on the floor of her apartment until I felt like I could do it. I knew I was going to do it.

That night I put on makeup and a revealing outfit and called an uber. I stepped out with a big smile, teetering in my stilettos. The man at the door looked me up and down and told me to come back tomorrow. I was utterly deflated. It had taken every ounce of effort for me to make it this far, and I would have to regroup and try again. He informed me that they had just hired three new dancers that evening. He suggested I try again but earlier in the evening the following day. The uber cost alone made my cry, and all of it to not even get in the door. In retrospect, it was the first of my real stripper experiences. What’s a stripper if not a person incredibly capable of handling rejection? I didn’t have any other options. I was terrified to start dancing at a club without any friends. I knew this was the only club for me at that moment. I resolved to try again the next day, and thankfully, that was the day I got hired to work at The Ritz.