So what chaps my fat, queer ass when I talk in public about doing phone sex is not what people may think about me. It’s what they think about my clients.

“So what’s the weirdest call you’ve ever done?”

“It must be hard talking to losers all day.”

“So all those freaks, huh? Scary!”

This is part of my inheritance, as a visible, activist-type sex worker in a society in which sex is simultaneously revealed and reviled. I get to publicly defend the honor of my clients, and by extension the clients of any phone sex worker ever, because most callers sure as shit won’t do it for themselves. And by go-go-Gadget super extension, I’m defending the sexual freedom and honor of my audiences as well.

They need it. Don’t you see? It’s a statistical certainty that in any co-ed or male-dominated crowd that I am speaking to, at least one or two of the guys have called phone-sex lines, and probably enjoyed it. It’s even more certain that in almost any mainstream bar or club crowd, a MAJORITY of the people listening, of all genders, have fantasies that they have never told anyone about, like the calls that I mention in my routines. So when they demonstrate their diss, and start making comments or assumptions about how freakish and loser-y my callers must be, my hackles rise. I  want to hug them and slap them at the same time. Denial is not just a river in Egypt. Projection is not just making sure people can hear your voice.

You get me? Because my clients are definitely part of the privileged mainstream: they have valid credit cards, and regular jobs, and normal-sounding voices–at least until they start calling me Mommy or Mistress. They at least know where to go to get their sexual ya-yas out. My regulars have a discerning ear, they like what I offer. They talk about their turn-ons, or at least say “Oh, YEAH!” when I hit their buttons. They are fuckin’ horndogs, some of them. They are shy. They feel guilty, or they feel great. Their fantasies are “crazy”,  or  vanilla, or some neopolitan mix depending on the day.

In short, they are you, dear Mainstream Audience.

So when I answer your questions with some side-stepping comment, not the wild voyeuristic freakshow response that you want; when I don’t give you a joke that ends with a punchline like, “… and then his mother walked in and asked him what he wanted on his sandwich”; when I look out at you from the stage and talk about my clients without ridicule or malice… I’m doing it that way out of respect for them and their sexual freedom. And, though you may not know it or want to claim the gift, I’m doing it for you, too.

You’re welcome.

It has come to my attention that a certain amount of horizontal… I won’t say oppression, but hostility exists among and between some people in the adult industries. I have seen on industry boards how PSOs distance themselves from street workers; I have heard how dancers in “top-shelf” gentlemen’s clubs don’t see any connection between themselves and the girls dancing in your basic “trashy strip club”; I have heard burlesque dancers–not many, but a few–say they don’t want to work the crowd for tips because then they’d be “just strippers”.

Here’s the thing, folks: If you can pick the work you do, great. If you can do your work in a comfy chair or a warm club with a bouncer watching your back, awesome.  If you’re only posing a couple times a month to buy those shiny new shoes, hey, it’s your dough. If you get your money from the box office or the clean checks that come twice a month from the home office, or if you have some stage kitten coming around and picking up your clothes and those sweaty ones, swell. But if your work is designed to get someone hard and/or wet, you are a sex worker. You may not believe it now, you may never believe it. That doesn’t make it less objectively true. You don’t have to believe in gravity to crushed to death by a falling piano.

Moving on: all the mental juggling you do to justify your game without picking up the name isn’t going to protect you from the stigma that comes from working with sex. If you are open about your profession, the hate comes thick and fast. If you keep it on the DL, well, think about why you’re doing that. And you can’t keep it quiet forever. Eventually you’ll have to tell your girlfriend or roomie or partner or best friend, or someone will find you out, and when they do, there will be some people who make assumptions about your availability outside of work, your intellect, your spirituality, your self-respect, your politics.

One way or another, we all get slapped with the broad brushstroke; the effects of that mark depends on the nature of your work. If it’s legal, it’s still considered skeezy and leaves you open to personal attack. If you’re working in a gray area, like pro-domme work in Massachusetts or prostitution in Canada, for example, there’s a fear component (no one wants to be a legal test case). If your work is outright illegal, well, whatever happens to you, the police and the legal system don’t usually give two shits about you and your rights as a human being, even more so if you are poor, transgendered, and/or a person of color.

Here’s my thesis. It’s not original, but I’m feeling it strongly, today of all days: if you’re doing work in the sex industry, the adult industry, whatever you want to call it… get your head on straight and get in fucking line. Do it. Start today. Don’t diss other sex workers, or tell abusive jokes, or let your friends tell such jokes. Come out to someone in your life who didn’t know what you do. Attend events around International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

Busy? Okay, here’s something real easy to do: get the fuck over the idea that you’re better than that girl in the suburban strip joint, or that “crack whore” on the corner, or that masseuse on craigslist, just because you don’t and wouldn’t do that work. We’re all sluts, in the minds of those who would see us disappear or die or otherwise learn our lesson and get what’s coming to us. Slut solidarity is the only way out.

When I tell people that I’m a phone sex operator, I get some looks, believe me. Acquaintances lift eyebrows. Friends grin big. The bouncer at the club where I was fliering, he got this speculative look in his eyes. The least response I got–and so therefore the most gratifying–was when I was applying for food stamps; the intake worker there just nodded her head, put a check mark on the form, and said, “That’d be self-employed, then.”

As tired as I get of the looks and the questions, though, I have to remember: What I do is not illegal in Massachusetts, or indeed, in most of the United States. I am not going to have my door busted down for my work. (Although I did almost lose my room last summer over it…) I am not endangering my life every time I sit down in my easy chair for a cosy little 10-minute erotic chat.

This all puts me in a special category of sex worker: someone who can be really open about my work, but also has the option of not talking about it, of not thinking about it, of ignoring the other people in the allied sex trades who HAVE to go face to face with their clients, who are constantly harassed by law enforcement, who bear the brunt of the stigma (all those hooker and whore jokes still get laughs!), who are beaten and robbed and raped and murdered because our culture is so fucked-up about sex that selling it makes you a negligible, disposable quantity.

I could ignore all that, but I choose not to. I’m choosing to use my privilege and throw down on the side of other sex workers everywhere. Join me on Thursday, December 17, to remember International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. If you’re in Boston, I’ll be at the SWOP-Boston memorial service that night. If you’re not here, go to the SWOP-USA site to see if there are any events near you. If there’s nothing nearby, read Annie Sprinkle’s list of 10 things that you can do to participate.

Only rights can prevent wrongs.

Going through this process is… odd. In other communities I’m occasionally seen as, if not a leader, at least someone who’s in a visible/influential/pioneering position. With sex work, no one is expecting me to have an opinion and/or ideas for action about this work and issues affecting it. I’m kinda relieved.

Relieved, and a little restless. That’s who I am. I’m sitting here thinking, huh, what should I do next? How else can I better get to know the other artists in my community? What should I know about other genres of sex work? How, on my limited income, can I support organizations that are making important programming and activism occur?

Call me a type-A personality; that’s A for activist. (Also artist. And articulate. And anally fixated. But that’s a different blog, sorry Anyway, as soon as “sex worker” became a part of my identity–that is, about four weeks after I got my first caller off–I went there: “what should I do now?”

I don’t have an answer to that question immediately. It’s gotta simmer for a little while yet. In the meantime, I’m working on my play, Phone Whore (more on that next week), which will certainly constitute visibility work in the world of theater. And I’m trying to broaden my blog reading outside my usual size-acceptance fields. Found Audacia Ray’s blog recently, with this post that spoke strongly to my activist self.

Audacia’s definitely getting on my forthcoming blog roll, along with other sex worker sites that, in my opinion, further the cause and/or give good read. Got suggestions for other sites to check out in the areas of sex work and sex education? Give them a shout-out here!

Twelve beguiling sex bloggers from NYC, photographed by top-name fetish, fashion, and art photographers. This shit is classy raunch, y’all! The result is a high-gloss, almost certainly NSFW 2010 calendar, with proceeds from the sales benefiting Sex Work Awareness, which does awesome programming in the areas of education, outreach, and advocacy for sex workers.

They’re taking pre-orders at the calendar site already (first link above), which means I have time to set up a little piggy bank and throw my change in for it (did I mention it’s been really slow?). Anyway, that calendar will go great on my thickly padded (ie, sound-insulated) wall, next to the kinky clip-on mini koala bears and the Mardi Gras pig pendant (”show us your teats!”).

(Slight tangent: What else should I get for my room to make it even more a comfy, cozy den of iniquity? What do you think, or what do you imagine, every PSO should have in their workspace?)

Coming out as a sex worker, though, has been a whole new treat in saying the unsayable, to people who I am sure did not bargain for it. I’m not talking about responses in my performance and friendship communities; if my friends and colleagues didn’t expect the career shift, most of them know me well enough to not be at all surprised that I am doing well. It’s the outer circle, the new and/or distant acquaintances, and the business contacts, where the fun begins. Since I started doing phone work, I have had to come out to my two current roommates, a half-dozen potential roommates, two government agencies, a three-person marketing research crew, and all my next-door neighbors (”why are you sitting out on the porch with your cordless phone?”).

In all of these encounters, I have striven for nonchalance, a sort of matter-of-fact breeziness in stating my source of income. But on the inside, I still tremble, knowing the societal bias and fearing for the potential impact my revelation could have on my home and my sustenance. How many people would want to move into a room directly under my work space? (One is enough, and she’s hopefully signing the contract next week.) Will the Department of Transitional Assistance still give me food stamps if they know I’m a phone sex operator? (Yes. My intake worker didn’t even blink.)

What do I do with that fear? I bulldoze through it, the same thing I’ve done with every other coming-out. My silence contributes to the problem; my action, my speech, lets someone know that I am that other. They may be indifferent, or afraid, or curious, or unnerved, or even a little freaked out, but now they have a face to hang that feeling on. And I have one more moment of being fully myself.

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For those who want a little less woo-woo and a little more action in their phone-sex blogs, I present the following

What I Did Yesterday

• two (2) peggings (that’s strap-on ass-fuckery), including one with a sissy submissive who was gratifyingly effusive afterwards
• two (2) blow-jobs, not counting fellatio as a bit part in a larger scene
• one (1) “shemale” session (I know, I know, that’s what it’s called in the biz)
• one (1) gang bang at a bachelor party gone awry
• one (1) mean muscular boss lady using very peculiar motivational methods
• one (1) public seduction in a club that would either have gotten us booted out or hired on the spot
• one (1) 20-minute fuck session that would have wrecked a hotel room
• one (1) cuckolding (involving Big Black Cock ™, naturally)
• one (1) housekeeper and her precious teenage ward
• one (1) rape-and-torture session, me on a little girl (more on this in a later post)
• one (1) interview with a caller who was very distracted by his online porn
• one (1) fart and scat session, heavy on the farts

This was an unusually busy day for me; with the recession, business has declined. But that’s a taste of, well, my callers’ tastes.

Have a dirty, delicious weekend, y’all! Stay dry unless you want to get wet, and stay cool unless you are deliberately cranking up the heat. Me, I just gotta keep the phone charged up…