One glance at the Tantric Temple website and a civilian would assume the barefoot girls seated in Lotus Pose were advertising yoga classes. A click on the bio photos revealed more: tanned, flexible calves stretched against a mirror and cleavage draped with shimmery fabric, soft curls dusting delicate necks. The text below our pictures reads: sacred sessions with tantric nuances, which are euphemisms for oily massages with happy endings by crystal-wielding naked chicks in a candlelit room in the space of a fifty-minute hour.  Book today!

Sensual Massage ads are meant to allure hobbyists and hoodwink vice so they’re veiled in immaculate delight and sprinkled with flirty riddles.  The women never show their faces or use their real names on Craigslist, EROS or Backpage but at the Divine Temple, where I worked, we stared straight ahead with confrontational glossed-lipped gazes, the whites of our eyes clear and fearless.    Look at us. Our faces demanded.  Here we are.  

L by Romy Suskin

Another way our ads stood out from the others was our quirky lingo. Sex workers often referred to themselves as providers but we called ourselves therapists and had non-stripper names. We weren’t allowed names that were flavors or brands like Gucci or Luscious. We were assigned mythological Greek heroine names like Venus Starlight, Artemis Grace and  Lampetia Dream. Our names could easily be seen on tarot cards or an MK-18.

Shortly after I got hired, there was some discussion about my name. Did it express serenity? Was it open hearted? My tattoos were aggressive so my name had to be soft and inviting, according to my boss, a gorgeous and unusually tall woman with long black ringlets that reached her ribcage, I was given the name Aphrodite Grace after an old goddess who was born from the foam of Uranus’ snipped genitals, and I got busy booking clients. I doled out 40% of my earnings to my boss, her called herself Monarch Divine and delivered the bills in white sealed envelopes at the end of my ten-hour shift.

Turquoise by Romy Suskin

    Language is the thin membrane that connects and separates my skin from yours. Words pinpoint the place on the map to navigate my culture, my neighborhood, my home and my handjob menu. I learned by making mistakes. At age two, I thought the stove was called hot-hot-seet-heart, because every time I got close to it my mom said, That’s hot, sweetheart. Like the stove, I learned the lexicon of sex work by getting burned. Words were mighty hot and they could seriously fuck up my life, like the time I met a man named Joe in the lobby of a hotel.

You’re giving me a handjob, right?

            Yeah, I said. No money was exchanged and no clothes were removed, but the yeah was enough to handcuff me and throw me in the back of a van. After spending the night in jail, I removed all of my ads and studied the craft of sex worker code. Knowledge was power. 

 First, I learned what I couldn’t say: happy ending, hand release, full contact, stimulation, prostate, fingers, orgasm or cash.  Never say erection, cock or pussy. Never, ever say yeah.

For pussy we said kitty and bliss refered loosely to an orgasm. But not always. Massage-plus meant more than a handjob, possibly a blowjob, prostate massage or perineum stimulation. GFE meant the girl would probably make out with a client. If you enjoyed Greek, it meant you might allow a client to eat your kitty. Happy making and deep tissue massage is a Hollywood handshake, a slick romantic comedy with a happy ending and free parking.  Tissues, antibacterial wipes, rubbers and towels were included in that package.

 When in doubt, said energy. Its definition vague but it suggested strength and vitality, vigor and heat with the capacity to move. I learned about energy when I met another girl for a job with her regular client. When I asked what to expect, she replied, He’s a lot of energy. When I arrived at the hotel, she fell to her knees. Her client expected oral sex and water sports, more former than latter. After the job, I was catatonic under a fuzzy blanket, hoping a Law and Order marathon would keep me from puking. I don’t like giving oral for cash. It makes my blood ache. It’s not that I think it’s intrinsically wrong or boring.

I learned that the lexicon of sex work is layered with nuance and agenda. At the TT, we didn’t say body sliding massage. We said integrity, abundance, and manifestiny as if we were winged, untainted nymphs, our farts dipped in gold, fluttering from above in garter belts and flip-flops, giving guys magical boners. When a client asked What exactly do you do in the session? the protocol response was: I offer sacred touch body work.

Miss Jackson by Romy Suskin

 In this hazy world of code, one fact remained clear:

 I was giving handjobs to dudes for cash and on a good day, I stacked about five hundred bucks. Clients were Googled and ID’d and I didn’t have to drive to the Four Seasons on Wilshire alone, vibrating with a secret in my throat. I didn’t give blowjobs. The TT allowed me to conserve my energy.

The women I worked with were travelers, dancers, performers and juicers.

Sex worker lingo was not only used to describe our world but to protect ourselves from the dogma against sex workers in this culture where cops delighted in rooting one of us out, like Dorothee.

A notorious arsonist was detained recently in Los Angeles, charged with 52 counts of arson. His motive, according to an LA Weekly writer, was that his mother, Dorothee faced deportation for fraud. Turns out, Dorothee was a sex worker and her ads were printed in the article. I imagined Dorothee’s son lighting a match and grinning while his fires raged. For you, Mom.

Apollo by Romy Suskin

Dorothee’s ads contained subtle cues. She hinted at extras: Loving, erotic touch in combination with deep tissue, G-spot and Hotspots, Sensual, relaxing, Happy making, very different!!!

Like me, her menu changed according to her shifting needs. When she panicked, she did more for less: She stimulated their perineum with her fingers, which is the male version of a G-spot. She gave them a Happy Making- an anally infused handjob. Like all providers, she longed to stand out.  It’s a competitive business, clogged by young, augmented girls and Dorothee knew the score. She taught her son how to light the kind of fires that are impossible to put out. And so they blazed..

She got increasingly desperate; offered a special for limited hours in order to extract some quick funds, and used words to sound credible and legitimate, urgent and wise:

Traditional TANTRA massage techniques, based on DOCTORS’s knowleges (sic) about the body, spirit, psychology of MAN!!! $100 promotion. Earth shattering erotic touch, body-to-body sliding massage until midnight.

Dorothee’s manic post reminded me of a night, before my stint at the TT. I had three bucks to my name and rent due in two days. I scanned Craigslist for a wild-card client who wanted a session now! and lived nearby. An attorney called. He wanted to be paddled for $150. He was short and rude with knobby knees. I was afraid my landlords would hear me whack him with his wooden paddle. I accidentally hit his tailbone. You want too much, I told him. He wailed and tried to pay me only $100. I had to yell to get him to leave.

Dorothee’s ad in the LA Weekly showed her pale neck and sucked in waist. Only the bottom half of her face was in the blurry shot. Her blond frizzy hair reached her shoulders and her lips were downturned at the corners. She had the lips of a mature woman, over forty, a mother of the man who lit 52 fires in closed carports. Her son.

I wondered if Dorothee was relieved to be incarcerated. I wondered if she grew tired of rubbing and sliding the blubbery flesh of dodgy clients with hairy backs and lint on their balls. I wondered if she had high energy clients. Would they remember her earth shattering touch? Did they know her by her flames? I wondered if she held their secret in her throat like a hot stone and if they held hers in theirs.

Dorothee, the fire keeper, touch healer, enflamed with fraud, awaiting trial. I wondered where she wanted to be, more than anything and if she burned she wrote this ad: You can lead me to the places you will like to be.. You can trust me to be respectful of your –Secret.

    (SF. 1999)

    In your grey striped bathroom wrapped in a monogrammed towel, you shaved. You splashed on Amber aftershave by Tom Ford. You button your favourite cornflower blue Fred Perry shirt. You look good for forty-two, you think. You listen to Aerosmith, but kind of like Marilyn Manson. You don’t tell the guys that you’ll meet later in a bar in Hayes Valley that you like Manson, or they’ll think you’re a fag.  The guys from work are twenty-five with sharp jaws and gym memberships. They travel business class and will do anything for free miles and American Express points.  

    Two duck pot-stickers and three cosmos later, you pile in a cab with the guys and roll over to O’Farrell and Larkin Street to hit the titty bar where you can get a handjob-maybe more. You wonder if Mark got a bigger check than you today, and you get a jolt of rage that settles in your gut, but you got your bonus and there’ll be more to come. Your portfolio is stellar and blowing up faster than real estate in Vegas. You’re looking early retirement in the eye. You own a couple rentals in Silicone Valley and have a sweet country home in Danville for weekends. You bought new Escalade. Thank God you hid your assets from the wife. You’re relieved that you divorced her after six years of mechanical cold sex. Now you wanted some full contact friction.

            The Century’s open until 4a.m. so sometime after 2a.m. you staggered in with the guys from what’s-his-name-from-work’s bachelor party. A girl in pink and black polka dots and bangs bounces up to you. She’s more alternative than you usually go for but she’s got dangerous curves and a sincere smile. She smells like cotton candy bubblegum and says, “Let’s go play.”  You’re flattered and shit-faced and wonder if you’ll be able to get it up. Of course you will. You wonder what this chick means by “play” and you decide to find out. The guys roar with laughter and high five you when the very tattooed girl sticks her erect nipples close to your mouth. You stagger after her towards a private area where she informs you “Nude full-contact dances are sixty bucks a song.”

You feel your head nod. She directs you like a circus monkey: “Sit here,” and presses you down until you plop onto a black vinyl couch. You’re drunker than you thought and regret the shot of Petron.

              “Put your weapons on that table,” she says.

            You laugh and empty your pockets of phones, lighters, keys and wallet and set them down next to a lamp the same colour and style as the room, which all had a theme, but you can’t remember what. There were blue walls and white fluffy clouds, maybe a King Tut lamp. Or a Buddha. You hand her three twenties and watch her slide out of her pink bikini. It’s so shiny- it looks wet. She probably spends a lot of time on the elliptical machine at the gym, like your ex-wife. She should try spinning instead. Her thighs are thick but her tits are perfection.

            She holds both of your wrists and slides your palms over the surface of her boobs, belly and smooth inner thighs. You recognize cheap peach and vanilla perfume on her neck. She props herself onto your lap so her knees and boobs eclipse your vision. Her arms reach behind you, rub your back and swipe the wallet from the table.  While undulated on your crotch, she counts your money behind your back. She wants to take the whole wad of crisp twenties, but after determining her level of misery a seven on a scale from one to ten, she takes eighty bucks and puts back the rest. She keeps the bills in a crumpled wad in her right palm and keeps dancing.

MIss Jackson by Romy Suskin

You get hard, but you don’t stay hard. She unzips your pants anyway and reaches inside. She moves slowly, her hands up and down your cock and moved hips in circles. You remember the belly dancer your ex-wife hired for your 35^th birthday. Her pink glossy lips touch your ear and her hot breath makes you jump.

That’s enough, you think. You’re soft. You’re too shy to let this woman get you off. You’re embarrassed. You start talking:

            “How long have you worked here?”

            “Too long,” she says. She doesn’t want to be numb anymore, but she is. Sometimes her defenses melt. Sometimes she loses control. She wants to stop stealing, but not tonight.

            “It’s my friend’s bachelor party. I should buy him a dance from you,” you say.

            “How do you know he’ll like me?”  She’s slightly disgusted with herself for stealing the money because he’s not awful. He didn’t try to stick his fingers in her G-string or tell her she’s too smart to work here. Her feelings are a hideous inconvenience to her, like sludge underneath her toenails. She guides your chubby fingers to her nipples and squeezes them.           

            “He will.” You zip up your pants, embarrassed that you’ve disappointed her, even though you know that’s ridiculous. Suddenly you feel angry and out of place and you think maybe this girl is also angry and out of place. The angle of her chin reminds you of your ex-wife. You wonder if she has a boyfriend. What he must think of her job. You wipe your wrinkled shirt. You worry the guys are scheming to fuck you out of your latest deal, so you hurry back out onto the floor and convince what’s-his-name to get a dance with her, but she’s gone.            

Later, you’re in a cab, reaching for your wallet to pay the driver, who dropped you off where you parked your Escalade. You think you’re missing a hundred bucks. Maybe you spent more on drinks than you’d planned. You remember the girl with the tattoos. She smiled big and acted horny but there was something sad about her. You dismiss the image of her smooth thighs from your mind. What was her name? Rosie? Violet? Stevie?

Cougar Town by Sheila Hiber

“Women don’t care enough about each other, in my opinion, but it took me years to figure that out.”-Alana Noel Voth

Dear “Marie Calloway,”

            When I was 21, Britney Spears was a Musketeer. I was insecure with a voracious appetite for attention and compliments, particularly, the admiration of older men. I ached to be seen, so I took off my clothes for money. When I started stripping, Tao Lin was ten years old. This was before FB, YouTube. Twitter, Tumblr and I-phones and before the send button became a lethal weapon. This was before celebrity sex tapes, before Americans became obsessed with gawking at the horrific unraveling of the human spirit on 60 inch Plasma TV’s.

    I was 21, and I knew what time it was. Time to use my feminine whiles to obtain the thing I craved.  I explored the shit out of my sexuality and smeared it all over bathroom walls and lesbian magazines. I took my stinking fingers to fisting parties, spied on my girlfriend who’d broken into my house and held a gun to my head and fucked me. I ensnared a slave.  I’d try anything.

Laura Jackson by Ronna

    You know you’re pretty. Thin legs and luscious hair, the pictures of your glossy lips surrounded by fog. I didn’t see “Adrien Brody’s” load on your face. I don’t know “Adrien Brody.”  I don’t know who his girlfriend is either, but I picture her nail polish and wonder if she’s my age and if she poured that nail polish onto her boyfriends balls and grinned as the lacquer dried.

What about him? Does he regret his actions? Does he feel like a slimy, arrogant douchebag? I wonder why he’s off the hook and “Marie Calloway” is under the microscope. I also wonder why, as a woman interested in female subjectivity, she gave men exactly they wanted: a star-fucker, hipster chick with a load in her face. They would jerk off endlessly. Her father might too.

Maybe we shouldn’t give them what they want all the time. Give them our beautiful legs open and lonesome. Let’s give them furious, witty, enraged words and see if it tickles their fancy.

So, you’ve made some mistakes. We are not fucked.  We are women who dig deep and write about our hideous parts with great love.

In my 20’s and 30’s I rooted out the women who saved my ass, and taught me craft. They are: Lorrie Moore, Mary Gaitskill, Michelle Tea, Eileen Myles, Cheryl Strayed, Lidia Yuknavitch, Dylan Landis, Susie Bright, Susan Straight, Sapphire, Mary Karr, Jeanette Winterson, Jennifer Egan, Dorothy Allison and Joan Didion.

Young writer, you are no Dave Eggers. You are no David Foster Wallace, writing to become “Unlonely.” You are not “fucked” like the characters on the pages of a Tao Lin novel. You are a Daily Rumpus, an on-line journal story, a lovely little thing with an angelic face with moxie and nerve. You could be the girl on her back in thigh-high leg warmers on an American Apparel billboard. But, you’re not. You’re a writer. You’ve read some books. You’ve been an escort, and you’ve made a splash on the Internet by the age of 21.  Writers I admire are blogging about you: Stephen Elliott, Roxane Gay, Tao Lin, and Alana Noel Voth.

Stephen Elliott was in my apartment once, handcuffed to a chair, hooded and blindfolded, penetrated by my cock. His head was lowered, almost touching his chest. I could hear him breathing. He seemed happy. I wanted him to be. After red wax dripped down his spine, my friend Ronna arrived. She walked into my house, took pictures and lightly mocked him, then left. I removed a red rag from his mouth. Know what I made him say?

“Tell me I’m a good writer.” Like he had a choice.

“You’re a good writer.” His heart wasn’t in it. I was crushed. He was a wet mouth, saying the words I wanted to hear more than anything, more than oxygen.

“Tell me again.” I wanted more conviction, but the words came out and landed like a damp piece of cardboard in the street.

I wasn’t a good writer. I was in grad school. He attended my senior reading, during which I broke the microphone stand so I had to hold the microphone like I was singing Karaoke while reading a painful, sloppy non-fiction piece about my mom dying of cancer.  

But I was going to be a writer. I swore to do what it takes. Criticism hurt.  I thought I learned how to shoulder rejection in strip clubs, but this flavor of rejection was different. One man rejected two of my stories, but gave me extensive notes. I asked him:

Are you just being polite because I know all of your friends and I have great tits?

Man: you have great tits?

Me: Yeah, my tits make Jenna Jameson’s look like a couple of juju bees.

I emailed him a naked picture of me. It was tasteful and staged and airbrushed, a pin up photo like the ones I put up on my blog.  Sending that picture was begging: Am I good enough?

I’m exactly twice your age. I could be your mother.

Leah and I, NOLA

I’m not. If I were, I’d tell you to not accept an open drink from a stranger and to beware of the send button because you can’t take it back.  I liked your sexual agency and your well-thought out views on subjectivity. Still there was this: You exposed “Adrien Brody” and his girlfriend. That was mean and cowardly.

I’ve learned by making mistakes. I dig for the courage to reveal myself and protect others.  Sometimes I fail. I wrote a story about being drugged with GHB on a paid date. The man who drugged me was black and he had a black name. But the name was too telling so I changed his race and his name, which was weird, because the professional black man who essentially raped me, not a white guy named Rob.

 I changed his name, race and other telling characteristics in order to protect his identity, because the story was about me, and the shame of my secrets. I’ve written many stories about men who paid me to touch them. One asked me to change more about his character on my blog because he was uncomfortable with the details. I changed them.

Writing is treacherous terrain where we dance the line between sparing others and splaying ourselves on the page. We write about our own suffering and shame because we want to connect with our readers. That is how we do it, with our words. We are not fucked. We can begin anew, with the blank screen, lit up and waiting.