Dear Antonia, Empress of the Night, The Woman Who Has Seen It All,

      My GF and I have lived together for 4 years. Once a month my girlfriend strips at a great club in Portland, Oregon which she and I enjoy immensely. I enjoy watching her transform from my girlfriend into a public sex figure who slays rooms full of men & women. She seems to enjoy stripping more than most of the performers because she thrives on turning people on. Naturally, she’s developed a respectable group of regulars who come to see her (okay, that was a bad pun) whenever she passes through town.

 We have a somewhat open relationship and she’s developed a limited side-thing with her best regular and has on a couple of occasions dropped by his house for nude photo sessions (he’s an accomplished amateur photographer). After the sessions she usually goes down on him in part because she gets so turned on by being photographed and partly because she likes him, all of which is fine by me. As with any open relationship, there is a certain chemical high we both get out of pushing boundaries and trying out new partners.

      Last week, Mr. Side-Thing asked her to take it to a new level; to provide a ‘girlfriend experience’ (I’m guessing he saw the Soderberg film) for a night for which she could “name her price.” He’s a 40-ish IT guy, so I’m guessing he’s got some serious green. This ‘girlfriend experience’ would obviously entail her sleeping with him, so I’m torn: on the one hand I really dig dating a stripper and living a little dangerously and I’m cool with her having sex with him once. However, this does cross a certain line somewhere though because it is actually illegal (I know I know, not in Germany, but even in PDX it still is) and because it involves a pantomime of dating and intimacy that is riskier than just dancing and taking your clothes off. And it’s hard to see where this ends. No doubt he’s going to want this to be a regular occurrence and could theoretically imperil her work at her club, which she loves. She wants to do it for the experience and she’s always been very dominant with this guy so she thinks she can control the entire interaction.

    My worry that this will change our otherwise ideal relationship. Her stripping has been a blast for the both of us, but it has still been a dalliance, a fun once-a-month excursion whereas this takes us into another arena of sex work that we’re both unfamiliar with. The emotional stakes seem way higher, too and I worry on some level that she will be angry with me for letting her do this, or think that I don’t love her because I’m willing to let her be with another guy, or that I’m enabling or her pimp or something.

 What’s a broad-minded stripper-lover to do? Do I let her try this once with stipulations, or do we back off and stay away from the road less traveled?

 -Main Squeeze

Dear Main Squeeze, I’m writing you from New Orleans where I strip at two clubs on Bourbon. Like your girlfriend, I’m a dancer who usually digs my job. I adore being on stage, providing fleeting companionship and hit of sexual attention I get from customers. I’m here to work and  I’ve built a decades-long career based on performing sexual prowess, but not tonight.

     It’s raining on Bourbon; lightening fills the whole sky and it turns into lavender eye shadow. The street is empty except for a homeless guy playing guitar under an awning of an art gallery. The backdrop in the window behind him is a red and black painting: a skinny saxophone floats in a yellow cloud. I poke my head into The Bruiser where two girls lean against the dark bar, waiting for a customer to get drunk enough to part with his green. Once in the door,  I’m paralyzed with dread. I’m scared it’s too empty and I won’t make any money. My thighs are tired and sore. I want to squirrel away my brain for other projects like writing this letter to you. It hits me in my frozen knees: I’m not enjoying this job and I want to leave. Business has been sad and slow on this trip and it’s freaking me out. There’s cement in my heels. I call my friend Laura. I tell her about my panic and dread. “Go hang out with your friends tonight, she said. “Tomorrow night will be better.”

         I take her advice, head back into the rain towards Royal Street with my stripper bag heavy on one shoulder. I meet my friend Patrick halfway: past Toulouse. St. Anne and  St. Peters.  We stroll in the steamy night and talk about writers we love (Rob Roberge and Jennifer Egan) and short stories (“Swiss Engineering”) and I remember, over oysters Desire, that sometimes my sexual power is best spent walking away from Bourbon Street with my stripper bag on my shoulder, empty handed. Later, on the St. Charles streetcar, I thought about intimacy and open relationships and Mr. Side Thing. Mostly, I thought about the exchange of power that happens in complex and beautiful relationships.

   My experience with GFE is limited, so I referred to my local expert, Laura, who had a GFE for a while. He wanted to retire her from stripping so she could get her aesthetician’s license.Here’s the deal: my friend Laura got a thousand bucks a week, but the client wanted more control. He was in her business. He wanted to monopolize her time and weasel his way into her life. He tried to control her with money, which he piece-mealed, and she was compliant- to a point.  GFE guys are looking for companionship that mimics dating, and from what I’ve gathered, it doesn’t always include sex, but it always includes kissing and dinners and dates, which is why I’m not good at GFE. I’m bad at dating so I would suck at pretend dating.  

      The short answer is-Yes. Your girlfriend’s GFE weekend with Mr. Side Thing will alter your nearly ideal, somewhat open relationship. This can be awful or it can be great. Either way, it will require a lot of work and communication. Being in an open relationship means you share her sexually so why not share her GFE experience as well? Since you’re both titillated by pushing boundaries and having other sex partners, she could tell you all about it, how she dominates him, what she feels and sees etc. Also, she’ll resent you if you make a stink. So, you may as well trust her and let this happen. 

But this is not her letter. It’s yours. Admit it: You’re scared and threatened. Why are you more bent out of shape about Mr. Side Thing than average Joe she picked up at Whole Foods for a quickie? Because as progressive as you are, Mr. Side Thing offers something you don’t: Money. Lots and lots of Money. Crazy-name-your-price-indecent-proposal, cash money and you’re afraid he’ll lure her away from you, not her job stripping. This is where trust comes in. Call me crazy, I believe in love. If you are the one she loves fiercely, no amount of cash will steal her away. Throw the rope of love and see if she catches it. 

Talk to her about your heartfelt fears, not petty bullshit like him texting her or prostitution being illegal (smoking pot is illegal. Do you worry about her smoking pot?) She knows this client fairly well, so let’s assume he’s not vice. Moving on, no matter how pro-stripper or pro-open relationship you are, your letter suggests you’re scared and threatened and I want you to feel that in your bones until you’re nailed to the spot and your legs are stones and your heart feels like it’s being eaten by vultures-like I was when I walked into the Bruiser. Why? Because it’s perfectly reasonable that you feel that way, and you feel that way because you love another human being. You don’t have to allow that feeling enslave you and you don’t have to take it out on her or do anything about it except communicate that to your girlfriend. Then move on. Get a massage. Go for a hike. Flirt with the waitress. 

Don’t sweat it. Chances are, Mr. Side Thing listens to Genesis, wears tassel loafers and doesn’t know how to fuck. 

 Your love slave in all whore-related matters,

Hurry up and take the picture! by Lexie Montgomery

A

I’m sitting in a small studio apartment in Venice that doesn’t belong to me. There’s a queen-sized bed against the wall with six gold and white pillows, a massage table that I will circle fifty times per client, and a toaster-sized sink. There’s brown crock-pot on the counter where oil and washcloths will soak and be warmed. Thighs and bellies will be wiped clean and the cloths will be wrung out and tossed in a hamper. Afterwards, the crock-pot will be sprayed with Clorox and my hands will smell like bleached vanilla for hours.

Budapest Lion on bridge

            The windows are open and there’s a cool breeze. Someone is strumming a guitar outside.  Light beige fabric dances against red curtains. It says-cozy, quiet, comfy-but I know I’m not safe here. My arms prickle with fear. I don’t like being alone in this golden, candlelit, red-framed box.  Sterile modernity is supposed to feel efficient but it makes me stiff and nervous: there’s a single person shower, an I-phone. A teapot.  A slim refrigerator, where there’s a plastic container containing brown, oily slop. The package says vegan tapioca pudding. I take a plastic fork and taste the sweet brown goo: a ten second-sugar hug to mask my terror.

             Last week, over thirty women were detained in Arizona for prostitution; their faces were plastered all over CNN. They were under investigation for six months and rounded up like cattle and tossed in the clinker, charged with prostitution, pandering and conspiracy: http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/Police-arrest-Temple-workers-129427883.html The Phoenix Temple’s website is similar to the establishment where I work.  For example, the way they describe their “religious practices” is the same language of new age sex work that is used here: layers of nirvana wrapped in aromatherapied touch, bridging sensuality and spiritual elements: it’s goddess-y, it’s chakra cleansing. It’s bliss. It’s tantric. It’s hogwash- It’s jail. It’s being stripped of humanity and unable to breathe in the claustrophobic concrete cell. It’s pepper spray and shame and drunken women throwing tampons across the room and others crying, holding their knees, detoxing from booze. It’s me sleepless and woozy and hopeless.

In this apartment in Venice, where I give happy endings, the ocean looks murky. Outside, tanned people in shorts pause at tables where venders peddle scarves and incense. They stroll towards the beach under a sky that’s nothing close to Austria blue; it’s a hazy grey exhaust pipe Los Angeles blue. The beach looks dirty, gritty and crowded. The phone rings. I answer calls. I Google people and investigate them. I turn them away. “You’re not going to call my employer, right?” they ask, sampling the same stupid terror that I feel. “No,” I say.”

“Sorry,” I say.

“We have to be careful right now.”

The Danube-Budapest

I won’t tell you how I got here because I’ve told you before.  What’s better is to tell you how I will leave here.

What about the towels? They’re clean and folded and stacked in the bottom of mirrored end tables. I wipe the counter, rinse a glass. And there are the clients who call and ask me, “Are you available now?”  I’m not.  The elevator smells like sweaty feet, on the way down to the laundry room, where the white rugs spin. It’s my job to clean the place after clients, which I do until my knuckles are red. I’ve checked ID’s taken money and sponged off the come and I’m still scared and silent. I take the rugs upstairs and blow out the hippie candles. I crammed a hefty percentage of the money in an envelope (the pandering part of illegal). The on-line discussion about sexwork is flawed and frustrating. The new agers babble about duality and Oneness. They claim the fight is a non-argument, that hippie soup logic that looks like spaghetti noodle brains falling from ears. What I want to say is fuck yeah, let’s legalize it, but I’m not going to jail, bitches.  I wish I were back in the Vienna countryside in the room with cancer. 

            The Vienna Countryside is green and yellow with cornfields and grapes on the vines of fences. My boyfriend’s parents live in a village the border of Slovania, close to the Mur River that divides Austria from Slovania. Ten miles in the other direction is Hungary. These are elfin wine people, like Napa and Calistoga in Northern California but less bourgeois wine tasting types and more 16^th century goth townees, with witchy houses and lots of nude Jesus’ with stony churches dedicated to Easter in a way that excludes chocolate bunnies and peeps. Across from the 16^thcentury castle church is a graveyard over a hill that overlooks the vineyards and corn. Some streets don’t have lights. 

Straden Village

             In the elfin countryside, we visited my boyfriend’s aunt, who lives on a road through a forest trees, on a snaky dirt road. The aunt has breast cancer and wears a headscarf around her naked head. He liked to tell a story of being little and scaring himself and having to walk up the hill in the dark , through the forest up the hill, like in Children of the Corn. The cousin’s pink glossy lipstick matched her scarf. I was told she was recently in the hospital with a blood transfusion and she went septic, then survived. But standing in the warm home was a smiling pale woman who hugged my boyfriend and looked at me and said, “nice teeth.” She spoke little English. We walked in her yard, where I pointed out the flowers I recognized: fushia I said to her and flashed my grin. “Rosemary.” “Honeysuckle.” I was hoping to connect to her garden, which bursted with life, like my mom’s greenhouse that exploded with tomatoes when she was dying. The fist of fruit punching through illness, demanding its place at the table. The aunt’s grapes were superb. They were fat purple globes in a bowl displayed for her guests. I bit the sweet juice and turned to my boyfriend, ‘These a

Mozart-Vienna

re the best ones so far.” He translated to the cousin and she looked me dead in the eye: “Isabella.” The grapes name.  I met her eyes that were so blue, Los Angeles skies would skitter away in shame.

Vienna Monarch

“Isabella,” I said.  My boyfriend said, “Good name for a girl” and led me to the side of the house where the cousin and his uncle made wine. These wine people had a musty, damp room full of barrels of moonshine. Back in the aunt’s house, cheery espresso waited on a doily. I smiled my grin and sat with cancer in the room and sipped my espresso. I spoke the language of cancer even though I was immersed in German. I recognized some words like good and fantastic. ‘Yes” I said sipping the espresso.

Gud. Fantastiche.

Before I left LA, I hit a woman in a crosswalk. The visor’s broken in the car I drive, so I held my right palm up in an attempt to block out the searing hit of orange sun falling in my face. I’d forgotten my sunglasses and was frantic, late for my writing workshop in rush hour traffic. I was thinking about the story I’d be reading. Ironically, about blindness. Also, about a woman shooting heroin and having a flashback to a rape while on stage at a strip club in SF. It’s a father/daughter story. A mom/daughter body story and an addiction tale. I hit a woman while I was looking right at her. I didn’t see her at all. I barreled through West Adams which is also the ten. I was supposed to turn left at West Adams. The white sun sliced my eyes.

There was a loud thwack sound that was a bad, crunching broken sound.  The sound meant whatever happened, it was too late. The phantom outline of a woman was an actual woman walking in loose pants. I slammed down on the brakes when I saw her, expecting the worse case scenario, a woman flattened on the ground bleeding out, gasping and onlookers on phones horrified. Forget the hazards,  I jerked over to the side.

I got out of the car I drive. Angry honks blared, but my scream was louder: “Hey, are you okay?” she wore loose light pants, short hair. Was she a phantom?  She looked down at herself with her hands raised up, as if she would be lifted. She was the age and stature of someone’s cool Aunt, carrying a bag.  Was she from LA? Was that a bag she was carrying. Did she wander off AMA from a rehab? “Yeah” she said. She stared at me for a half second that felt like an hour.

Side of house: I don't count the dark hours

“I’m really sorry.” She looked down at herself, to make sure she was alive and unscathed.  Then she kept walking away into the setting sun. The passenger’s side mirror dangled from a plastic wire.

Now I’m in the countryside in Austria, on land where people aren’t allowed to build. There are only cornfields and farms, black and green grapes we pick off and eat. I can see cottages the color of Easter Eggs.

6a.m. run through the village

Nearby, an ancient Catholic church sits on top of a steep hill. I walked in the still night with my Austrian boyfriend past a concrete castle with smashed shutters through a cemetery lit by red flickering candles.

Town of cats/cemetery of Cats: Straden

The moon creamy and clear like an egg in the black sky. There was a noise up ahead. A man emptied the trash and greeted us with a greeting that means “hello to the Gods.” Cats surrounded circled our ankles.

German is spoken here and I try to follow along, but I got a D in German in college which I deserved. Even the crows are thicker and more guttural here, and people sound like they’re arguing when they’re not. We are ten miles from Slovania. Ten miles the other direction from Hungary. There’s a lone castle on a hill where it’s rumored that witches were burned in the 16th century under this iconic cornflower blue sky. People squawk about pollution as the reason for colorful skies in LA, but there’s no match for this bright clear turquoise action. These blues just don’t happen anymore in Los Angeles.

Witches were burned here: Riegersburg Castle