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.
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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
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…