So… there’s this little play that I’m doing this summer and fall. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Phone Whore. Really. It’s little. It’s just got me in it. I have a director and a tech director and a set builder, but on stage it’s just me in my pajamas. The set pieces can all fit in my 1991 Toyota Corolla, plus two suitcases, a duffle bag, an office-in-a-box, and a pantry-in-a-box.

(Oooh, an office-in-a-box? Sounds snazzy! What is it? Ummm… office and merch supplies thrown in a box. Same thing for pantry-in-a-box: rice, granola, sofrito, tuna fish, peanuts, and a good chef’s knife. In a box. As simple as dick in a box, but easier to explain to customs.)

ANYWAY.

A lot of my life is wrapped up in getting this show on the road, getting it booked into places, getting homestay, making a fantastic poster, and, well, packing my life in a box for five months and putting it on wheels. That in itself is fairly traumatic. But add on top of it, I’m basically committing to saying the same vulnerable, sexy, scary things (one audience member at the Boston opening weekend called it “intense”) for 50 or 60 shows over the next five months.

How can I tell that I’m scared? I find myself second-guessing my decisions, even with the positive feedback, even with the plans in place, even with the Montreal postcards done and sent to print, the first of thousands of cards I’ll be handing out to people this year with my face on them (layered over a fierce pegging narrative, a very readable wall of smut in 20% grayscale).

I keep bugging my director. It’s not too much? I ask. NO, she says, shut up.

I look at posts like this, about how coming out and sharing one’s story as a sex worker is a privilege, and I think, god, what I’m doing is so fucking self-centered and privileged.

And then I feel the weight of the responsibility, because I know that people are going to take me and my play as some kind of representation of the whole, and it’s not, it really isn’t, but that doesn’t matter, because in the larger scheme of things, that’s just the way it’s going to be interpreted. And then I try to sort out unnecessary guilt from necessary good intent, and that’s a bitch, let me tell you.

And then I think, what if people really like it and come out to it? I’m going to have to file taxes in Canada next year, jeezus, I still owe $7000 in back taxes here in my own goddamn country! Or what if people start stalking me because of it? And then I start to get an anxiety attack.

And then inevitably the phone rings. (Warm pork chops or an anxiety attack, the calls always interrupt something good.) (And actually another call came in just now, a 15-minute hand-job. Five bucks for me, yay!) But you know what? As busy as I am, making lists or trying to reach kinksters in Calgary or nailing down a venue in DC–even while on tour, because I’m sticking as close to my required shifts as possible–I need the calls to keep coming in.

For starters I need to keep making money. I don’t know how the tour is going to do. But beyond that, doing the calls calms me right the fuck down. It reminds me where the hell this all comes from, this play, my comedy stuff, the tour. A fifteen-minute titty fuck grounds me in the straightforward (which is not always to say simple) act of getting a stranger off. Audiences and reviewers and the public and, hell, community standards can be prickly little bastards, fickle and treacherous. But my callers only want one thing, and by god, I know beyond doubt that I am good at giving it.

Thanks, guys!

No Comments | In: Cameryn 101, Phone Whore on the road | tags: I'm an Artiste Dammit, Phone Sex, Phone Whore 2010 Tour, Social Issues and Damp Tissues. | #

So much time between phone calls some days! But without all that downtime, I wouldn’t have discovered this fantastic fundraising effort.

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?)

2 Comments | In: Politics of Sex Work | tags: Other People's Awesomeness, Pimpin', Social Issues and Damp Tissues. | #

I have come out about many things in my life. From the time when I was 14 and told my religious parents that I didn’t believe in God, to the coming-out as queer in my early college years, to the lunchroom revelation at age 26, when I confronted my meat-eating head-on (in the form of a savory-smelling take-out box containing sweet-and-sour pork)… for some reason, I have been gifted not only with a decidedly contrarian bent, but also the cast-iron cunt to stand up for it.

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.

**************

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…

8 Comments | In: Politics of Sex Work | tags: Social Issues and Damp Tissues. | #